10 Signs That Innovation Will Fail
What are the signs that innovation in a company is set up to fail? It would be great to have a check-list on this, but unfortunately innovation is too complicated and company-specific to just apply a standard one for this.
However, we can share our insights on this and help each other become better at spotting the signs of failure.
Thus I have listed (in a non-prioritized order) the red flags I look for when I talk with executives and innovation leaders trying to get an understanding of their corporate innovation capabilities. What do you think and what can you add?
• The lack of an innovation strategy. Executives and innovation leaders have failed to link innovation with the overall corporate strategy. As a result, the innovation efforts have no clear directions and there is not a proper mix of incremental, breakthrough and radical innovation. No strategy, no focused effort, no results.
• No definition of innovation. Innovation means different things to different people. Every company should develop their own definition that fits their situation and use this definition to build a common language for their innovation initiatives.
• Too much focus on internal capabilities. The future of innovation is open and global. Who will get this first? You – or your competitors?
• Too much focus on open innovation. This is not the Holy Grail. You need to go open, but keep a strong focus on your internal resources. A key to innovation success is the ability to combine internal and external resources and act on the opportunities that arise from this.
• Internal silos are not broken down. If you cannot make innovation happen across your own business units and functions you cannot expect to succeed with external partners.
• Too much focus on ideas and too little focus on people. People and processes matter more than ideas. Yet, too few companies establish programs in which they can identify and develop the right people and match these people with the right ideas at the right time.
• Executives do not understand that a strong innovation culture equals a strong networking culture. Although executives might acknowledge the value of relationships, they often leave this in the woods saying that people can figure this out by themselves. Not true. Executives need to establish networking strategies and employees need training that fits these strategies just as well as the time to build and nurture relationships.
• Innovation efforts focus on technology or products. Most companies do not work with innovation models such as the Ten Types of Innovation which helps the employees and external partners view innovation in a more holistic way. Remember that innovation is also about services and processes.
• The usual suspects play the game. Innovation champions and other elite units can work, but the setup of such units often also sends the signal that these guys will take care of it. Other employees might think they do not need to get involved. Everyone should not work with innovation at the same time, but programs or platforms that give everyone opportunities to work with innovation should be in place.
• Executives and innovation leaders underestimate the speed of change. One example is open innovation. A key objective here is to become the preferred partner of choice. This will happen fast and yet many companies are not even getting ready to claim their position.
I look forward to hearing your thoughts and ideas on this.
Nice list! I can confirm several of the entries from my own experience.
I would add to the list:
* Myopic focus on short-term results. Companies want innovations to be cheap and quick to implement and yield positive financial results within a very short time. Although these criteria might be appropriate for incremental improvements, they are certainly not appropriate as general selection criteria!
There is a range of testers for exploring this. Alternative or additional thinking:
The one classic one to work around is provided by Goran Erkvall that looks at the dimensions of the climate for innovation. These are looking at the Challenge, Freedom, Dynamism/Liveliness, Trust/Openness, Idea time, Playfulness/Humour, conflicts, Idea Support, Debate and finally Risk-taking.
This has been further developed and refined and you can benchmark a number of innovation indicators.
For example I’ve used one that looks at Idea Generation, Resource Allocation, Opportunity Development, Large Scale Implementation potential, Learning Environment, Knowledge Management, Aligned Organization, Innovation Agenda, Innovation Culture, Rewards & Recognition. Clearly this tends to be more formal than a quick assessment but the structure of these can provide for a simple exploratory questionnaire.
Another simple one is to test for obvious ‘blockers’ quickly in conversations that block the potential for innovation, these can include Lack of Openness, Risk-Adverse, Top-Down, conservative, Seniority, Comfort Zone and Hierarchical
Each has its appropriate place.
Another is to construct around “causes of decline” or “market place threat’ as an exploratory discussion to relate innovation and its success, failure, opportunity and threats.
Hope these help your thoughts Stefan
Good list Stefan, and good insights as always. There are a few others I’d add, including 1) no clear scope for the innovation effort 2) expecting innovation but limiting or avoiding risk 3) No clear sponsor or senior executive involved in the innovation effort 4) the assumption that innovation is a project rather than a capability.
Great list and great discussion. My three cents:
• innovation as an end instead of a means
• innovation is not part of the bigger (product/service/process) development process
• failure is nor allowed
Specifically: the innovative “process” or “methodology” is not embedded in the product/service/process development process, like DFSS; risk taking is discouraged, and the employee performance measurements do not reflect that innovation is valued.
Really to elaborate on some of the great items on this list above. We have not yet specifically named NIH (not invented here) as a major stumbling block. In a previous situation I have see first had what damage this can do to an otherwise well supported and forward looking business change plan. Certain individuals and organisations seem to take great pleasure in killing something just because it was not them that came up with the idea – maybe this way they feel they can still have some control? I don’t understand it myself – alien to my way of thinking. These people often are the joy killers – you know this when you hear the dreaded words.. “Let me play the devil’s advocate here..”
How to combat this? Strong leadership and a clear vision an strategy which has been agreed up front across all parts of the business.
The other item for me (alluded to above) would be not integrating innovation into all aspects of the business – and therefore presenting it as something apart – a special initiative rather than the real heart of normal business.
I have a different list. (top five)
1. Management abhors risk and any associated new idea.
2. The company does not contain a “critical mass” of creative personalities.
3. The company rewards and promotes conservativism.
4. The company is not customer/consumer focused
5. The company is a classic pyramid (top down) managed structure.
Overall, you could lump the above five into a single concept of employee freedom vs. management control….as being out of balance. If associates in an organization fear risk and ridicule, they will not create. If ideas are not rewarded or reinforced, they will not happen. If the work environment is overloaded with administration – creativity will be ignored. If a company does not listen to their end customer, innovations will miss the market. INNOVATION is not about process, it is about attitude…that is why consulting is so difficult. In a 3 day or one week workshop you cannot change 20-30 years of risk adverse management attitude.
I share John Thomas opinion. I just wrote a blog on “How real is your innovation?”. The essence of the story is: “Do you REALLY want to Innovate ?” or is it just all window dressing.
Post is here
http://petervan.wordpress.com/2010/01/13/how-real-is-your-innovation/
I tend to agree with John Thomas and Peter, if the innovation drive is initiated from top down then there is little freedom involved at employee level as it usually ends up as forced issue that eventually dies through lack of incentive. As the work environment becomes more and more overloaded with, not only administration, but with the general workload the thought process and therefore the innovation process looses ground to the daily grind. Segregating the innovation process to a certain group of individuals I believe, is not the best way forward. Innovation should be part of the whole workforce.
I also believe that if the strategic company vision is properly explained, also if the middle management are indeed capable of translating this to the work floor without bias then the whole company can be involved in the innovation process
Very good article Stephan as usual.
I agree with a lot of the comments made but more especially with the one from John Thomas.
Innovation is in first an attitude more than anything else.
To bring in the front such an attitude some very counter intuitive measure need to be put in place
-. Rewarding the team in first before the individual. The hero culture just generates impression that “I cannot do it” so leading to avoid risk taking and keeping people in their confort zone. When we look a radical innovation it is very often the idea of a man which has been very well shape by a group of people around him either in the company or outside.
-The second point is the reward of failure. Failure is complety part of the innovation process. As Einsteins said “someone who never failed, never tried to innovate”. A failure is always an aoccasion to learn and this is key as it allows people to accept risk , not to be afraid with change and more flexible and dynamic. We have to come back to really believe in people and not just on tools whatever they are.
Innovation is not just a matter of technology, business, process but in first a very important matter with HUMAN resources, something completly forgotten in most of todays companies.
Hello Stefan,
I really enjoy checking in on this site and agree with all that has been offered so far. I look at innovation through the lens of diversity. Our focus on diversity may be associated with an opportunity cost of losing ideas, ways of thinking, and expressing ideas because we want everyone to adopt the dominant company culture. In doing so, I think companies lose the potential of leveraging international talent within as they try to build markets abroad. This must be a part of the discussion of building innovative organizational cultures.
Unfortunately, diversity is a subject that falls in the realm of HR and is seen as an unpleasant, compliance-oriented endeavor. Diversity is truly about diversity of thinking, which is an important component of bringing innovation to fruition.