What's the difference between a mistake, a marketing failure, and a problem?

Seth Godin suggests,

A mistake is something you learn from… you did it wrong, you’ll do it better next time.

A marketing failure is a mismatch between what you built and the market.

And a problem is an invention waiting to be built, an invitation to find a solution.

Problems and preparation

Seth Godin writes,

It's not a problem if you prepare for it.

Buffalo famously gets a lot of snow. Growing up there, though, no one really freaked out about it, because we had machines to get rid of it and the attitude that it was hardly a problem worth hyperventilating over.

Most problems are like that. When we prepare for them and get used to them, they're not problems anymore. They're merely the way it is.