A milk producing company chose as its motto: "You Can Whip Our Cream, but You Can't Beat Our Milk." Needless to say, the phrase captured the imagination and has been quoted around the world.

Whipping and beating is not usually seen in a positive light. Yet when too much mixing, whipped too much air into a batch of soap, who would have guessed what a boon it would be to Proctor and Gamble? Hopefully the worker who made the mistake was adequately compensated for his "error."

And what turned the mistake into profit? A little daring and a little creativity. The daring was to put the soap on the market. It could have produced an adverse reaction when buyers realized they had paid for a different product. The creativity is seen in advertising the floating capability of the soap.

Looking back upon our past mistakes, both minor and major, it may do us some good to add a little daring and creativity to the equation.