Why big ideas fail: The importance of validation

Innovation isn’t always about a billion-dollar idea, it’s about execution, timing, and adaptability. Yet statistics show that over 70% of innovation projects fail. Why? Some common reasons include: 1. Lack of alignment between vision and execution. 2. Overcomplicating solutions instead of solving real problems. 3. Failure to gather customer insights before scaling. 4. Resistance to change within the organization. Innovation is not about being flashy, it’s about being practical, solving pain points, and creating measurable value. The most successful companies innovate quietly, consistently, and strategically, ensuring the solutions they create actually matter to the market.

When you think of "innovation", what comes to mind? When we think of innovation, we often link it to technology, but from this recent webinar I gained a fresh perspective by learning that innovation consists of three parts: the impact, the idea, and the process. What stood out to me the most was how the responsibility for innovation is distributed in a company: employees at the bottom drive technical execution, and executives and management provide resources and guidance to drive innovation, but the middle layer... is where true innovation happens! Project managers for example, sit right in the middle layer; they need to understand the project or product and translate ideas into action in order to deliver real impact. This is an insightful approach and it makes me appreciate the creativity of the role even more! https://lnkd.in/ez2yMePA

What Makes Innovation Truly Disruptive? “Disruptive innovation” is one of the most overused labels in business. Almost every new product, app, or service claims the title. But as Clayton Christensen reminded us, not everything that’s new, shiny, or wearing a metaphorical leather jacket is disruptive. Here are the key questions to test whether an innovation is truly disruptive: 1) Does it begin in overlooked markets? Disruption often starts where incumbents (current leading businesses) aren’t paying attention, the new entrants start serving customers who are either underserved, priced out, or not seen as profitable. 2) Does it prioritize accessibility over performance? Early disruptive innovations often look “worse” on traditional metrics, but win by being simpler, more affordable, or more convenient. 3) Does it follow an improvement path that eventually attracts the mainstream? Over time, the “good enough” solution quietly climbs the ladder until it meets (and sometimes exceeds) the needs of core customers. 4) Does it challenge the business model, not just the product? Disruption isn’t just about technology, it often redefines how value is created and captured. The takeaway: If your innovation only makes the existing product better, that’s sustaining innovation. If it forces established players to rethink their model entirely… that’s disruption. Or put differently: if it just adds sprinkles to the cupcake, it’s not disruptive. If it teaches people they never needed cupcakes at all, then we’re in disruptive territory. So next time someone pitches you “the Uber of sandwich toasters” ask: Is it really disruptive, or just toasting bread with extra buzzwords? And as Christensen warned in The Innovator’s Dilemma, one of the biggest mistakes leaders make is listening only to today’s best customers. Sustaining improvements keep those customers happy, but true disruption often begins where your current customers aren’t looking at all.

Just started reading Scott D. Anthony ‘s terrific new book about disruptive innovation. Some of my favourite tidbits, also apply to disrupting your career. Here are some quotes from the book that I especially like (I hope you can see why 😊): The impossible becomes imaginable becomes plausible becomes prototyped becomes standard practice. Innovation success doesn’t come from planning and acting; it comes from testing, learning, and adjusting. Great innovators relish this journey and adeptly manage it. Great innovators think, ponder, pontificate, and plan. But more important, they do. They do everything they can to make their idea as tangible as possible, as quickly as possible. Every idea in its early days is the same: it is partly right and partly wrong. The challenge is, you don’t know which part is which. You can study all you want, but the only way to really figure it out is through disciplined experimentation.

Why disruptive innovation often comes from the margins: Throughout business history, many disruptive innovations have emerged not from industry giants but from marginalized companies or entrepreneurial teams. Whether in technology, retail, or manufacturing, marginal forces often serve as catalysts for disrupting established systems. Margins mean less path dependence. Large companies often have vested interests and established models, which makes them more cautious or even conservative when approaching new opportunities. Small players on the margins, on the other hand, are free from burdens and can more boldly experiment and break through. Limited resources drive innovative thinking. Marginal teams often have limited resources and cannot compete with mainstream players in terms of capital or scale. Therefore, they are more likely to: seek differentiation through technological breakthroughs; lower barriers to entry through innovative business models; and quickly adapt to market feedback through agile iteration. Marginal markets foster new demands. While mainstream markets focus on the majority of consumers, marginal markets are often overlooked. The early internet targeted niche geek groups; mobile payments first took off in areas lacking bank coverage. Once these marginal demands are met, they can become the tipping point that drives entire industries. Marginal perspectives offer unique insights. Marginal businesses often occupy distinct ecological niches, allowing them to observe problems from a non-mainstream perspective and identify opportunities overlooked by traditional logic. This unique perspective is the starting point for disruptive innovation.

"True innovation is not about bright ideas, processes or KPIs. It's about finding the right people. People that believe in something, and people that have a true passion." People think that innovation comes from those with a background in tech, when in reality it's found in those with curiosity, passion, and the permission to fail. Your organization may agree with the idea of innovation, but what are they ACTUALLY doing about it? https://lnkd.in/e-SfteDj

Innovation doesn’t just happen. It’s created. It’s easy to sit back and wait for inspiration to strike. 𝐂𝐥𝐢𝐜𝐤 𝐨𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐤 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐠𝐞𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐝𝐮𝐜𝐭:https://lnkd.in/dddj8c38 __________________________ 1_This tool will save your life 2_Feel confident and secure with this tactical extendable metal stick. 3_It is compact enough to carry discreetly, yet powerful enough to use if needed _______________________ But real progress? That comes from action.💪 The problem is, most people assume innovation is for “the creative types” or the “big thinkers.” Wrong!☹️ It’s for anyone willing to: ↳ Challenge the norm ↳ Break patterns ↳ And take risks Because the second you start thinking differently, New opportunities appear everywhere. Here are 5 ways to start innovating right now:👇 (From Forbes Magazine) 🔥 Question everything ↳ Stop accepting “this is how it’s always been done.” ↳ The biggest breakthroughs come from challenging the norm. 🔥 Surround yourself with different thinkers ↳ If everyone around you thinks the same, you’ll never see new possibilities. ↳ Different perspectives = fresh ideas. 🔥 Break something ↳ Tear apart a process, system, or routine and rebuild it better. ↳ Disruption isn’t a risk - it’s a necessity. 🔥 Get uncomfortable ↳ Growth doesn’t come from playing it safe. Try something new and watch how your thinking expands. 🔥 Act fast, refine later ↳ Perfection kills innovation. Take the leap, launch the idea, and tweak it as you go. The world rewards action, not just ideas. Which of these are you going to try first?

Hard truth: Most corporate innovation frameworks are designed for optics, not outcomes. Worse: Most corporate innovation frameworks are OVER designed; everything in its place, "perfectly" designed to turn innovation into a factory. Big companies over-invest in innovation processes because they're highly systematized entities (rightfully so!) to win in their core business. The core business has to be super efficient, factory-like, but new innovation -- growth innovation -- doesn't work that way. Here's a simple but powerful diagnostic: If your innovation process can't show measurable progress in 30 days, it's too complex. If your teams need permission at every step, you'll never move at market speed. Big companies are never as fast as startups, but over-systematizing slows things down to the point of not being worth it anymore. What can you get done in 30 days? (A lot, with the right resources + approach!) Successful innovators don't chase the latest methodology or a rigorous "can't fail" playbook (since that doesn't exist!) Instead, they build tailored, step-by-step playbooks that account for: * Legacy processes * Risk aversion * Stakeholder complexity These things are real. We can't ignore them. But create lightweight governance, set clear metrics for progress (but not insanely rigorous stage gates based on "work done" versus results), and empower cross-functional teams to make real decisions quickly. No innovation framework can be slapped on top of a corporate and work. It requires deeper understanding of a company's unique context and iteration. These playbooks need to be customized and personalized for each big company, and they need to evolve over time. Think of your innovation systems, frameworks and playbooks as experiments themselves, which you run, learn from and then edit. What's the biggest internal friction point holding back innovation in your organization? What actually worked when you tried to overcome it?

ARE YOUR INNOVATORS REALLY INNOVATING? Raul E. Maciel. They are fast-spoken individuals. They can paraphrase anything that “Jobs said,” “Google does,” or “Tesla made right”. They are telling you everything wrong, right in your face (if they have the guts). They are assigned the marvelous and ethereally undefined job of “creating innovation”, or “making our company an innovative one. The thing is… There you have your Innovation Director looking at your face, making you spend whatever amount of resources you never thought to spend. Sometimes they come alone, reciting Design Thinking's over-chewed phrases and exercises. Some other times, they are part of an innovation team, so it is unnecessary because they often come to the same conclusion, so all but one is too many. Are your innovation directors and teams really innovating? Do they really surprise you and the CEO team with bright solutions or new business in places where there are Blue Oceans that no one seemed to notice? Are they really looking inside our internal processes and services? And providing you with innovative alternatives towards efficiency for every process, which for years have been quiet victims of continuous improvement patches and experiments? Are they returning the big money and resources that are spent on them and their teams? What is your innovation department's ROI? Do you know? Are your “innovators” spending your money and resources on STRATEGICALLY ALIGNED and DATA-DRIVEN projects, or are they still experts of the “flavor of the month” or the flashy mammoth events where they find out that "grass is still green"? Dear CEO, I want to share your thoughts and plans about innovation.  Are you asking the RIGHT questions to your innovation team? I want to motivate you to BELIEVE that through REAL innovation, your company will find and exploit Blue Oceans, where competition is irrelevant. I do not know you, but I appreciate you. Please do not buy innovation jargon and fast-talking innovation salesman, buy instead, highly competitive products and services like a home-run hit baseball that everyone sees to fly away far from the batting place where you are now. I want you to believe in innovation, but I also want to have in your innovation team REAL GAME CHANGERS, they are paid to THINK and EXECUTE, to REFORM AND SHAKE your organization.   Are they doing so?

Innovation isn’t just about creating something new. It’s about doing things differently. What makes disruption powerful is that it rarely begins where you expect. Often it starts in overlooked corners of the market, with ideas that seem too small or even underwhelming at first. Yet these are the seeds that grow into industry-shaping shifts. The challenge for established organisations is that the very processes and values that made them successful can also hold them back. What got you here may not be what gets you there. Disruptive innovators are willing to question assumptions, step away from short-term wins, and invest in possibilities that don’t have immediate payoff but carry long-term impact. True disruption requires courage. But standing still? That’s the greatest risk of all. Source - https://lnkd.in/dSK8Jhda