6 key innovation mistakes to avoid

The life cycle of products has decreased dramatically. So innovation is essential. But it is difficult, risky and demands a lot of resources. Many mistakes are made over and over again. That’s why I like to share with you six rookie innovation mistakes I encounter at organizations. So you can avoid them in your own practice.

1. Monopolize innovation in a separate team. In this way the rest of the company will just lean back and see what these guys will produce. And I promise you there will not be a lot of support for everything they come up with, due to a lack of ownership in the rest of the organization. An innovation department is useful indeed when they facilitate innovation for the rest of the organization and don’t monopolize it.

2. Start with a fuzzy focus. When a senior vice-president invites you for a briefing on innovation, you usually get some general directions: “We need to innovate. We want something really disruptive without great risks”. Now the moment you say yes, it’s becomes your project, so your problem. Be sure to ask the senior vice president a lot of questions to get a clear innovation assignment. What does he or she expect? This forces the top management in your company, from the start, to be concrete about the business need, market/target group for which the innovations must be developed and which criteria these new concepts must meet. If you don’t get a clear focus there’s a huge chance that everything you bring to the table will be rejected.

3. Work on only one idea. A number of studies on innovation (Robert G. Cooper, 2011) shows that for every seven new ideas, about 4 enter development, 1.5 are launched and only 1 succeeds. These are very poor odds. So what do you do when your boss, the vice-president marketing or the innovation board stops your new product idea? Do you have any alternatives available to realise your business challenge? So never bet on one horse. That’s the message. There’s a huge risk that an idea will never reach the market.

4. Let 1000 flowers blossom and wait to see which one will look best. The lifecycle of products have been reduced with a factor 4 the last fifty years. Agility and speed became essential competences of competitive firms. When you say yes to innovation and start lot of innovation projects they all will ask for resources (money and people) to support them. Not choosing means that each project will have limited access to the right resources, which will slow down the pace in which new products and services will be developed. So be sure to kill innovation projects so the best ones get adequately supported to keep up the pace of innovation.

5. Research and analyze endlessly. Innovation is about creating something NEW. Although is’t good of course to do a bit of research, the only way to find out if customers will like it and it’s technologically feasible is to prototype, to test and to experiment. Be sure to do ‘live-tests’ at the front end of innovation and check out how customers react on your new concepts. Test, test and test.

6. Present ideas to top management. Of course,as innovator, you are expected to break patterns. And originality helps. But when you present your idea it is wise to keep in mind that the rest of the organization is still as conservative as ever. Your senior management might praise you for your creativity. But, will they buy the idea and give you the resources to develop it after seeing a flash mob? I have my doubts. Don’t bring them ideas, bring them business and growth potential. Draft a mini new business case which covers at least three perspectives:

1. The Customer: will they like it?
2. The Business model: will it be profitable for us?
3. The Technology: can we produce it?

I wish you a lot of success avoiding all the innovation pitfalls. Go for it.

This article is published in collaboration with LinkedIn. Publication does not imply endorsement of views by the World Economic Forum.

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Author: Gijs van Wulfen is a recognised innovation authority and keynote speaker.

Image: Traditional Incandescent light bulbs are seen at an apartment in Munich. REUTERS.