{"id":1571,"date":"2010-02-10T09:35:19","date_gmt":"2010-02-10T08:35:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tsirigosorbit.com\/blog\/?p=1571"},"modified":"2010-02-23T06:53:30","modified_gmt":"2010-02-23T05:53:30","slug":"56-reasons-why-innovation-initiatives-fail","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.tsirigosorbit.com\/blog\/?p=1571","title":{"rendered":"56 Reasons Why Innovation Initiatives Fail"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"BlogInnovation is in these days. The word is on the lips of just about every CEO, CFO, CIO, and anyone else with a three-letter acronym after their name. As a result, many companies are launching all kinds of “innovation initiatives” – hoping to stir the soup. This is understandable. But it is also, far too often, very disappointing…<\/p>\n

Innovation initiatives sound good, but usually don’t live up to the expectations. The reasons are many.<\/p>\n

What follows are fifty-six of the most common ones – organizational obstacles we’ve observed in the past twenty-two years that get in the way of a company really raising the bar for innovation.<\/p>\n

See which ones are familiar to YOU. Then, sit down with your Senior Team… CEO… innovation committee, or best friend and jump start the process of going beyond these obstacles. Let the games begin:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. “Innovation” framed as an initiative, not the normal way of doing business<\/li>\n
  2. Absence of a clear definition of what “innovation” really means<\/li>\n
  3. Innovation not linked to company’s existing vision or strategy<\/li>\n
  4. No sense of urgency<\/li>\n
  5. Workforce is suffering from “initiative fatigue”<\/li>\n
  6. CEO does not fully embrace the effort<\/li>\n
  7. No compelling vision or reason to innovate<\/li>\n
  8. Senior Team not aligned<\/li>\n
  9. Key players don’t have the time to focus on innovation<\/li>\n
  10. Innovation champions are not empowered<\/li>\n
  11. Decision making processes are non-existent or fuzzy<\/li>\n
  12. Lack of trust<\/li>\n
  13. Risk averse culture<\/li>\n
  14. Overemphasis on cost cutting or incremental improvement<\/li>\n
  15. Workforce ruled by past assumptions and old mental models<\/li>\n
  16. No process in place for funding new projects<\/li>\n
  17. Not enough pilot programs in motion<\/li>\n
  18. Senior Team not walking the talk<\/li>\n
  19. No company-wide process for managing ideas<\/li>\n
  20. Too many turf wars. Too many silos.<\/li>\n
  21. Analysis paralysis<\/li>\n
  22. Reluctance to cannibalize existing products and services<\/li>\n
  23. NIH (not invented here) syndrome<\/li>\n
  24. Funky channels of communication<\/li>\n
  25. No intrinsic motivation to innovate<\/li>\n
  26. Unclear gates for evaluating progress<\/li>\n
  27. Mind numbing bureaucracy<\/li>\n
  28. Unclear idea pitching processes<\/li>\n
  29. Lack of clearly defined innovation metrics<\/li>\n
  30. No accountability for results<\/li>\n
  31. No way to celebrate quick wins<\/li>\n
  32. Poorly facilitated meetings<\/li>\n
  33. No training to unleash individual or team creativity<\/li>\n
  34. Voodoo evaluation of ideas<\/li>\n
  35. Inadequate sharing of best practices<\/li>\n
  36. Lack of teamwork and collaboration<\/li>\n
  37. Unclear strategy for sustaining the effort<\/li>\n
  38. Innovation Teams meet too infrequently<\/li>\n
  39. Middle managers not on board<\/li>\n
  40. Ineffective rollout of the effort to the workforce<\/li>\n
  41. Lack of tools and techniques to help people generate new ideas<\/li>\n
  42. Innovation initiative perceived as another “flavor of the month”<\/li>\n
  43. Individuals don’t understand how to be a part of the effort<\/li>\n
  44. Diverse inputs or conflicting opinions not honored<\/li>\n
  45. Imbalance of left-brain and right brain thinking<\/li>\n
  46. Low morale<\/li>\n
  47. Over-reliance on technology<\/li>\n
  48. Failure to secure sustained funding<\/li>\n
  49. Unrealistic timeframes<\/li>\n
  50. Failure to consider issues associated with scaling up<\/li>\n
  51. Inability to attract talent to risky new ventures<\/li>\n
  52. Failure to consider commercialization issues<\/li>\n
  53. No rewards or recognition program in place<\/li>\n
  54. No processes in place to get fast feedback<\/li>\n
  55. No real sense of what your customers really want or need<\/li>\n
  56. Company hiring process screens out potential innovators<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Others we may have missed?<\/p>\n

    Source: Blogging Innovation<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Innovation is in these days. The word is on the lips of just about every CEO, CFO, CIO, and anyone else with a three-letter acronym after their name. As a result, many companies are launching all kinds of “innovation initiatives” – hoping to stir the soup. This is understandable. But it is also, far too […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5],"tags":[285,284,286],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.tsirigosorbit.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1571"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.tsirigosorbit.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.tsirigosorbit.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.tsirigosorbit.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.tsirigosorbit.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1571"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/www.tsirigosorbit.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1571\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1582,"href":"http:\/\/www.tsirigosorbit.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1571\/revisions\/1582"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.tsirigosorbit.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1571"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.tsirigosorbit.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1571"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.tsirigosorbit.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1571"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}