innovation success Archives

13/10/2015

10 Ways to Reduce your Failure Rate of Innovation

customer frictions, failure, innovation assignment, innovation success

Gijs van Wulfen

You are not able to stand still in this fast paced business environment, but most of the time innovation fails. Innovation process-expert Robert Cooper shows that of every seven new product/service projects, about four enter development, 1.5 are launched, and only one succeeds. Innovation is so difficult to master, indeed. I love to share with you five reasons why innovation goes wrong and give you ten ways to reduce your failure rate of innovation.

How innovation goes wrong

I encounter in practice so many people struggling with innovation. It’s has so many pitfalls. Here’s a list of five reasons why innovation goes wrong in daily practice at so many companies all over the world.

Our short-term mindset rules. Your company focuses on getting results next quarter, as your shareholders demand profits today. In this way money and resources are dedicated to sales & marketing, instead of innovation.
We cannot change our habits. Your company lacks the ability to invoke change, the ability to change their mindset. “My colleagues don’t think beyond what made our company successful thus far”.
We fear failure. Your past innovations were not successful and have cost a lot of money. “Managers were fired because their launches of new products failed”.
Our innovation process is chaos. When you lack a process and structure it’s really hard to get tangible results as it takes 18 -36 months on average to get an new idea to the market.
Customers reject our new products and services. A lot of our new products failed because customers did not wanted them. “We struggle to get inside the head of potential purchasers of the product or service”.

10 Ways to reduce the failure rate of innovation

Although there are no easy solutions, there are ways to improve the effectiveness of innovation in your company or for your clients. I love to share with you ten actions to reduce the failure rate of innovation.

1. Create momentum for your innovation project at the start. There must be urgency otherwise innovation is considered as playtime and nobody will be prepared to go outside the box. If this is not the case: stimulate other managers to explore your fast changing environment and wait until they get nervous and will prioritize innovation.

2. Start your innovation project with a clear and concrete innovation assignment. This forces the top management, from the start, to be concrete about the market/target group for which the innovations must be developed and which criteria these new concepts must meet. This forms a great guideline underway.

3. You can invent alone, but you can’t innovate alone. Use a team approach to get both better innovation results and internal supporters for the innovative outcomes. Invite people for whom the assignment is personally relevant. Invite both people for content as for decision-making reasons. Invite also a couple of outsiders as outside-the-box thinkers. Get a good mix between men and women, young & old, et cetera.

4. A lot of managers love to be in steering groups. Don’t let them! Innovation is a difficult and dirty job. It requires not only ‘young wild dogs’ but also ‘some grey hairs’. Let the internal top problem-owner (vice-president) and important influencersparticipate in the innovation team. Let them join your journey instead of observing it from a distance.

5. Use a structured approach. To think outside the box is a good start. But you have to come back with innovative concepts, which fit the ‘in the box’ reality of your organization, otherwise nothing will happen. A structured approach helps you to connect the dots. It will also help to create a common innovation language among your people.

6. When you ideate unprepared with the usual colleagues hardly anything new appears. That’s why it is essential to get fresh insights before you start creating ideas. Let all team members visit customers and others that serve as a source of inspiration for innovation opportunities. Great ideas emerge after being inspired. So go out there yourself in a search for inspiration.

7. Winning new concepts give potential customers a concrete reason to change. It will solve relevant problems of customers. If you want to create innovative products or services start with discovering relevant customer frictions to solve. There are several ways to discover them, like personal visits, focus groups, web searching and crowd sourcing,

8. The world is changing at a faster pace. Keep a high pace in your innovation project, otherwise it becomes long-winded and boring. It gets killed when it takes too long without any progress.

9. Use the voice of the customer. How attractive are the new product or service concepts really? That’s a legitimate question. Therefore you should check the strength of the new concepts and prototypes among potential customers at the front end of innovation. Use the voice of the customer internally to convince your peers that you’re on the right track.

10. Bring back business. So, draft mini new business cases instead of coming up with post-its or mood boards. And substantiate, in a businesslike and convincing manner, to what degree and for what reason the new concept can meet all essential financial criteria of your organization.

So, I hope these 10 ways will stimulate you to improve your own innovation processes in practice and your success rate!

pic credit: Garett LeSage -flickr.com

innovation

04/09/2014

10 Great Tips to be an Effective Innovator

innovation, innovation success

Gijs van Wulfen

Innovation is one big struggle. Not being able to change habits within the organization. Being creative at the wrong moment. Frustrated by budget cuts. Confronted with a lack of entrepreuneurship. Putting pressure on people in operations who resist change. Taking the credits as team leader myself instead of praising the team.

Yes, I made a lot of mistakes as marketer, strategy consultant and innovation facilitator. The good news is that I learned a lot. That’s why I love to share ten lessons how you can be an effective innovator in your organization.

1. Innovate together. As a young marketer I used the word ‘I’ way too much. Being responsible for a product category, I considered myself king of a small universe. You can get wonderful ideas on your own. But in an organization you can only innovate together. You need all the other departments to develop your product, to produce it, service it, sell it and bill it. That’s why innovating in a team is more effective. The chance that a new-to-the-company innovation survives is much higher if it has a lot of fathers and mothers.

2. Choose the right moment. On continuous basis organizations develop and launch variations of present products or services. It’s less risky. Most companies step into new markets or launch disruptive initiatives when they realize that present markets and products can’t generate growth anymore. So be like a hunter. Who only shoots when he knows that one bullet is a sure kill. So for real innovation projects you better wait until the right moment of real urgency.

3. Facilitate. When the company appoints you as ‘innovator’ others have the tendency to sit back, because innovation is now your responsibility. Don’t fall into this trap. Don’t come up with new products, services or business models yourself because it will all stay YOUR initiatives. A much more effective role as central ‘innovator’ is to facilitate innovation. This means you help others in line functions with processes and resources to be more innovative themselves.

4. Discover Needs. Your innovative product or service requires a different behavior from your customer. They will change their behavior and/or internal processes (in BtB) only when your innovation solves a challenge or problem for them. That’s why it’s so important to identify customer dreams, needs and problems in the very early stages of your innovation process.

5. Use the Voice of the Customer. Once you’ve developed an innovative idea or prototype the question remains: is this a good idea or not? In your organization are a lot of persons resisting change. They will say no to anything. In my role as marketer in the food industry I learned to make use of the voice of the customer to get internal support. So test your ideas and prototypes in an early stage at customers. And use the favorable test result and enthusiast testimonials to get internal support.

6. Be innovative. Act Conservative. Your organization is less innovative than you. That’s why you have a game-changing role. Your effectiveness will be dependent on the internal support you can create among the non-innovators. That’s why it’s wise to be innovative and act conservative. Present your innovation not as something really extraordinary but as the normal next thing to do. Your chances to convince the non-innovators will increase.

7. Be naughty. Innovation doesn’t stop at the first no. That’s the moment it really starts for you. You have got to be clever to let your innovation project survive all kinds of dramatic moments like budget cuts. So be prepared to be naughty. When the innovation project is officially stopped due to a budget cut, continue for example your work under another project. Well, you know all the tricks.

8. Connect decision makers. Innovation ist Chefsache”, say the Germans. That’s why you should involve ‘the boss’ from the start. Not in a steering committee on a distance. Invite Top Managers as team members and take them with you on your innovation expedition. In this way the decision makers can get new insights themselves. And when they are part of the process they will support the end result.

9. Do it fast. On average an Innovation project takes 18 months for new services and 36 months for a new product. Be sure to speed it up. You know when there’s a takeover, a strategy change or another crises your innovation project will be at risk. So focus and deliver as fast as you can.

10. Be open. There’s always a lot of secrecy around innovation in a company. In practice with al this secrecy you alienate the rest of the organization with a lot of negative consequences. If you have a clear and structured process and inform everyone on the progress without telling big secrets you maintain support with the people you need later on to implement your innovations. So be open.

I have developed a structured innovation method for the front end of innovation, based on my own lessons learned. Feel free to download the innovation expedition map of the FORTH method.

One more thing. Even with my ten tips, innovation remains a struggle. Don’t fight it. Accept it and you will increase your effectiveness immediately.

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Gijs van Wulfen is a professional innovation speaker and great storyteller. Watch two movies where you see Gijs ‘live on stage’, here.

photo credits: Flickr/ A. Mouraux

FORTH innovation method innovation

21/08/2014

Awesome Innovation Infographic To Double Your Effectiveness

FORTH innovation method, innovation success

Gijs van Wulfen

Take a closer look at the Innovation Infographic as pdf

Starting innovation is for many a struggle to master. A study of Booz & Company shows only a quarter of all companies are effective at the start of innovation. And Stage-Gate Guru Robert Cooper shows that of every seven new product/service projects, about four enter development, 1.5 are launched, and only one succeeds. You might recognize some of the struggles in practice:

“Our short-term mindset rules.”
“Our innovation process is unorganized. It’s chaos.”
“We cannot change our habits within the company.”
“We struggle to get inside the head of our customers.”
“There is no support for innovation among my colleagues.”

We like to help you with a structured approach, which combines both creativity and business reality. The innovation methodology is called FORTH – an acronym found in the first letter of each of the 5 steps: Full Steam Ahead, Observe & Learn, Raise Ideas, Test Ideas and Homecoming. The FORTH innovation methodology structures the chaotic start of innovation, creates 3-5 mini new business cases and fosters a culture for innovation in an expedition of 20 weeks. The deliverables of this innovation expedition are 3-5 mini new business cases for innovative concepts, which fit the ‘in the box’ reality of your organization, otherwise nothing will happen. FORTH was developed in practice and has been used successfully in Europe by more than 35 organizations in both B2B and B2C markets and in non-profit sectors. The method is part of the innovation bestseller The Innovation Expedition. Recent scientific research, studying 10 FORTH cases (2007-2013), shows that the use of the FORTH methodology doubles your innovation effectiveness:

Regular innovation process: 37.5% of the screened ideas are launched.
FORTH innovation process: 77% of the ‘mini new business cases’ are launched.

We wanted to celebrate this news with this wonderful innovation infographic at the top .

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Gijs van Wulfen is a professional innovation speaker and great storyteller. Watch two movies where you see Gijs ‘live on stage’, here.