Why innovation failure is a badge of honour

When you come up with new ideas and try to make them reality you won’t always succeed. Most new ideas don’t lead to new successful introductions. There is considerable evidence that shows that of the thousands of ideas out there, only one of them is converted into to a successful product. It takes 3000 raw ideas to get to 1 successful product (1).

My message to you is never to consider an idea which didn’t make it to the market as a failure, because your learnings are priceless. Be sure to wear your so-called innovation failures as badges of honour. Let me illustrate it with a practical example.

A year ago a big ambitious services company from the Middle East approached me to help them with an effective start of innovation by facilitating the ideation phase. The Innovation project had very high ambitions. We should disrupt their sector and bring new business cases to the table which actually would more than double the revenues of the operating company in one of their main markets.

After an intensive 20 week ideation journey, the core team of 10 people drafted and presented 5 mini new business cases. The board was stunned by the quality and decided to focus the development and continued with 3 concrete innovation projects. The development phase started with drafting a full new business case. Each of the innovation project got an owner, who originated from the ideation team in the first phase.

The full new business phase focussed to research the achilles heels of each initiative more in depth. One of the projects was an innovation which would completely digitize the customer order process. The innovation project leader herself immersed in the market with customers. She found out that in practice, they did not like it at all. Instead of simplifying the order process, digitization made it more complex in their eyes.

So after an initial eureka in the ideation phase, there was now a full stop of the initiative. The innovation project leader has two feelings at the same time: relieved and disappointed. Relieved of course because her inner voice said it wasn’t providing value to the customer. Being result-oriented it’s obvious she was disappointed, as a person.  She should not be disappointed though as an innovator, because she got a three months pressure cooker in customer insights, concept-making and innovation management. She learned a hell of a lot.

The CIO, her boss said to me: “she should wear her innovation failure as a badge of honour”. And so she should.

So the next time you as a project leader or manager have to stop an innovation project, don’t be disappointed, because your learnings are priceless. Be sure though to work one several innovation projects at the same time so at least one of them can enter the market succesfully! In this case two out of the three new business cases will enter their Innovation Lab for further development.

Never bet on one horse!

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 speaker in innovation and Founder of FORTH innovation method.

Image: A man goes up the stairs at Tokyo’s business district. REUTERS/Yuya Shino.