3 Real Reasons Your Innovations Fail, and How To Fix It

Most seminars and conferences I’ve attended typically started by highlighting the need for change. The need to innovate.

Yes, the world is constantly changing. Yes, we still remember how Nokia or Borders went from kings of their domains, to being rubbles of their past self, or even closed down permanently. All because they failed to change, while the world did.

Adapt or die. We get it.

Somehow, understanding the need for change does not automatically make us experts in acting on it. I’m sure we’ve all said a version of this line before:

“I have tried <…insert innovation attempt…> before, but it didn’t work. So I stopped.”

In my experience working with businesses, regardless of their sizes, I’ve observed these 3 common reasons why their innovation attempts failed.

1. Not having clear, measurable goals

Working with no goal in mind is like driving aimlessly around town, hoping to end up somewhere interesting. With no idea of what ‘interesting’ looks like, you’ll end up spending too much time driving in circles, and you might not even realise it when you see it. 

When you do this with 10, or 100 other people in your company, how far do you think you’ll get? How much time will you spend? Teams with goal-less initiatives usually run out of time/money/motivation before they even see results.

Now, imagine having clear goals as your destination. This means knowing exactly what you’re aiming for. Naturally you’ll spend way less time doing useless work, and more time working on things that matter.

Having clear goals help knowing how far you’ve gone. With a goal to start with, at the end of your journey you’d know exactly if you got there, fell short, or ended up further. Your goals also give meaning. They give you something to be excited about and look forward to.

On your next innovation attempt, write down 2-3 things you want to achieve. Also throw in some success indicators while you’re at it, so you’ll have something to compare your progress against.

Sure, goals don’t guarantee success. But they can guide you to where you want to be, and that’s much better than being lost in an aimless journey. 

2. Doing too much, too soon

Innovation means change, and change is uncomfortable.

Remember the last time you signed up for a program with a fitness coach? Your coach would send you a fitness plan that involves progressive overloading - which means your workouts are designed to gradually get harder as you go. This is done because if your coach decided to put you through hell week from the start, your body won’t be able to cope. And if somehow you survived, there’s good chance you won’t show up again next week because of your painful experience.

The same applies to your innovation attempts. Rolling out big changes that affect a big group too soon would likely cause major discomfort for people, that they end up giving up.

Gradual changes make your innovation more sustainable. It spreads the changes over time so you’d have more stable growth. By having more room to review your progress, you can adjust your efforts along the way as needed.

A good way to know if you’re doing too much, too soon, is to frequently ask your team for feedback. If they say it’s too much, then you can tone it down. If they’re not feeling any challenge, then you can increase the intensity. There’s no formula for this, and it’s down to figuring out what works with your team.

So whenever you have big innovation goals, break them down into smaller bits. Lay out a plan to gradually build towards your goal over time, bit by bit. Your plan should be realistic enough that it doesn’t overwhelm people, challenging enough to drive growth, and flexible enough to allow adjustments.

3. Expecting to make it big the first time around

Let’s be honest - failing is a natural part of every innovation, and only a fraction of innovation projects end up being valuable. 

Many companies however, get so discouraged or frustrated over a failure, that they don’t bother trying something else.

To succeed in something, there’s no getting around failing. When you first learned how to ride a bike, you don’t get to pop a wheelie straight away. You’d start with training wheels and would fall off a gazillion times. When you finally get the hang of it, you’ll have the scrapes and bruises to show the countless failed attempts before you finally made it.

If you look up the history of any successful company, you’ll also find a list of things they failed at. Killed by Google shows a long list of Google products that have been killed off. This shows no company is too big to fail. In fact, failures are what made those companies who they are today.

Knowing we must fail to reach success means we must be smarter it comes to innovating. Aim to fail early and frequent. Create an environment where you start with a slower pace and have a soft platform to break your fall. Review your attempt, take notes, repeat.

Bonus reason: Too much buzzwords

Words matter.

We know this for a fact, because why else would marketers spend millions of dollars on well-crafted words to influence our thoughts & behaviours?

If we understand this, it would be naive for companies to promote innovation using words people cannot relate to, and expect them to get on board. Unfortunately, many companies still fall into this situation.

To be fair, I use buzzwords regularly myself (*cough* agile transformations). They’re useful to spark interest, and can help my contents be found on the internet. But, there’s also a reason why people avoid feeling too buzzed when they have a night out. A bit of buzz can be fun, and win you new friends. But have too much of it and you’ll start to put people off.

Take these ones for example:

“As an industry front-runner, we endeavour to bring state-of-the-art technology to boost our ROIs.”

“To better align our goals and execution, we ‘Lean’ to ‘Portfolio Management’ as our framework of choice.”

“To optimise synergy in this new normal, we need to think outside the box by leveraging disruptive innovation. We do all this by circling back to our core values, and focusing on diversity and renewable energies.”

I’ll admit - those were extreme examples. Sadly, they’re not far-off from what we see out there.

People can only get behind what they understand. When you over-buzz your messages, there’s a chance you might upset your audience, rather than inspire them. Your words also become muddy and meaningless, which make them harder for people to understand.

Instead, be more genuine in your messages. When you’re unsure, ask yourself this question - ‘would I say these over a coffee chat with my friends?’. Make it conversational, make it approachable. Find a way to say the same thing with words you’d normally use in day-to-day conversation.

Here are the same statements earlier, de-buzzed:

FROM

“As an industry front-runner, we endeavour to bring state-of-the-art technology to boost our ROIs.”

TO

“As industry leader, we want to come up with better tools and processes to make our customers happy.”

FROM

“To better align our goals and execution, we ‘Lean’ to ‘Portfolio Management’ as our framework of choice.”

TO

“We aim to be more transparent in managing our work, so we can be more excited about our goals and understand how to achieve them.

Talk to your audience as a friend. You’d be surprised at the responses you’ll get.

The bottomline

Innovation has no end game. It’s an ongoing mindset that you and your team must have, to evolve with the changes of the world. Hopefully these observations gave you insights on what to look out for, when you start your innovation journey. 

Ready to start your innovation? Talk to us today.