You're both describing the same concept -- taking a 'non-success', learning lessons from it, and then using those lessons to do better things in the future.
It's just one of you is OK with continuing to describe that situation with the term 'failure', with all the existing negative connotation baggage, while the other prefers to find a new word to describe it.
The advantage of this, from a purely utilitarian perspective, is that you don't feel the emotions of shame & disappointment that "failure" usually connotes. And so you can jump into the next idea more quickly, with an open-mind, and pursue it with the same thrill of discovery.
One of my favorite business stories is that of the Nintendo Playing Card Company of Kyoto, whose CEO came to the US to visit the US Playing Card Company. He realized that even if he captured the entire world market for playing cards (this is before MtG) he still wouldn't have a very big business, and set out to find something better.
I recognize that you probably think I'm an idiot or terribly misguided or just denying of reality. In my mind, you just haven't gotten it yet - I didn't always think like this, but I came to accept it after much effort, both because it makes me happier and because it's actually led to more success, by your definition, than believing that some people are just smarter and more capable than others. But that's okay - either you will or you won't come to accept it, and either way it doesn't really affect me, and that's the other half of my point: we each set our personal standards and have our own lens through which we see the world, and that's fine.