Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire

Chapter 7. Going to Market Blind: IDEA COMMERCIALIZATION BLOCKAGES

The Key Dangers

• Creating solutions (products, services, or a combination) that are merely useful and not valuable.

• Launching a fully funded idea too early—rather than launching it as a cheap experiment.

• Not having the courage to kill off ideas that are proving to be less promising than previously expected.

• Doubling down on sales and marketing rather than listening and evolving the solution based on early results.

• Underestimating the educational effort required for a potential radical innovation and pulling the plug on it before you learn where you can evolve the concept and try again.

Overview

Too often organizations select ideas to commercialize that are merely useful and not valuable, or they launch an idea too early without understanding customer adoption timelines and the investment needed before it takes off in the market years later. Does your organization have idea lock-in challenges where it is okay to fail but taboo not to complete a resourced project (even if it proves to be a bad idea)? Does your organization have sufficient beta or test market processes in place? Does your organization do a good job at nurturing and evolving a potential radical innovation, or is it more likely to kill bigger potential innovations when early results are poor? We will explore the barriers to idea commercialization success that companies erect and suggest ways to knock them down.

Useful or Valuable

Coming up with great ideas will ...