Recognizing Root Cause of Innovation Failure

Root Causes of Innovation Failure

So what are root causes of poor innovation performance?

Following a series of surveys by BCG ( www.bcg.com ) a few years back, they argued there was a clear emerging need to resolve specific ‘weaknesses’ in the innovation practices of clients that are impacting the ROI and driving down innovation performance.

How can you fix the root causes of these? We have some clear thoughts and would be happy to discuss these with you.

Here are my thoughts on the root causes of failure

Key concerns that impacted innovation provided from these surveys were:

  1. Lengthy development times
  2. A risk-adverse culture
  3. Difficulty selecting the right ideas to commercialize
  4. Lack of internal and international coordination
  5. Poor enforcement of time lines & milestones
  6. Limited measures and metrics to understand performance
  7. A lack of organizational alignment
  8. Dissatisfied with return on spending

Squandered opportunities need targeted improvement

  1. Learning to balance risks
  2. Focusing on time frames more
  3. Seeing returns across the portfolio of projects
  4. Earmarking sufficient funds
  5. Partnering effectively with suppliers and others
  6. Fostering a climate of innovation that promotes.
  7. Deepen the understanding of customers

Outcomes needed to be resolved

  1. Moving quickly
  2. Enforcing time lines and milestones
  3. Balancing risks and returns across the portfolio
  4. Obtaining input from across divisions and geographical areas
  5. Securing early commercial involvement
  6. Earmarking sufficient funds and appropriate resources
  7. Providing strong support to the project teams  

Hurdles tend to lie at different stages of the innovation process (industry specifics examples but certainly not exclusive to these only)

  1. Idea selection (mainly technology and telecoms)
  2. This lack of clear insight into customers (manufacturing)
  3. A shortage of great ideas (consumer products)
  4. Inability to get across, market and publicize innovation (Auto)
  5. Moving ideas to cash
  6. Time-to-market, time to volume

The triple bottom line: speed, discipline, enforcement

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Author: paul4innovating

My role is to build the understanding, structures and architecture of the Business Ecosystem. This is to frame,shape, and guide the architecture and thinking that enables leaders to relate, design, build and evolve their own ecosystrms with clarity and confidence to gain that compunding growth that provides the value and impact. The Intelligent Integrated Business Ecosystem (IIBE) is the framework construct that supports this.