Top Ten Innovation Killers

Discipline V. Innovate Purposefully, is unlike the other five Disciplines, because it primarily provides principles and tools that are used in day-to-day execution of the steps in the other disciplines. Innovating purposefully...is a mindset that permeates the culture of an excellent organization." (page 180)

A recent Harvard eLearning Alert stated “70% of all business initiatives fail.”

Joyce Wycoff articulates the Top 10 Reasons for Innovation Failure:

1. Not creating a culture that supports innovation
2. Not getting buy-in and ownership from business unit managers
3. Not having a widely understood, system-wide process
4. Not allocating resources to the process
5. Not tying projects to company strategy
6. Not spending enough time and energy on the fuzzy front-end
7. Not building sufficient diversity into the process
8. Not developing criteria and metrics in advance
9. Not training and coaching innovation teams
10. Not having an idea management system

BOTTOMLINE: While it's probably impossible to compute the exact percentage of business initiatives that fail, it is widely acknowledged that most do. After years of research and observation, it is clear that the same reasons for any change initiative failure tend to be the same culprits that make innovation initiatives fail.