DocAndersen
Identify the right market: The other pressure of the market is getting to the core or right market for your innovation. This one impacts large companies, small companies, and startups. If you pick the wrong market, your innovation will struggle. Remember the market pressure there are thousands, millions maybe even billions of innovations lying on the floor for the most part undiscovered. Find your TAM and slide your innovation into a place that market will see and recognize.
Commitment to Innovation: So first let me explain why it’s a commitment through failure. In the world that is innovation, there are many types of commitments. In the world of failure, there aren’t as many. There is a conceptual commitment to failure. Once the failure occurs, the commitment is removed. There is a commitment around failure, where once the failure is reached the innovation is asked to create a workaround. Finally, there is the much broader commitment through failure where no matter what happens the commitment is there.
Each of the three commitments has a different impact. Understand that the impacts detailed below are the perfect world commitments. In reality, these vary within the parameters much more than the clean-cut view here would suggest.
- Commitment to Failure: There is a breakpoint a stoppage when a failure occurs. This allows the innovator to stop and look at the problem differently. There are several potential actions here one is to change the initial agreement to one of the next two commitments, and the other is to stop where you are, and put the innovation away for a while. Both of these are effective and will produce the desired innovation just at a different rate than originally projected.
- Commitment around failure: Once failure is reached we often throw up our hands and bemoan the failure. In this scenario rather than a full stop the innovator is encouraged to find an alternative route. At some point, the reality of this commitment may be that it drops back to one of commitment to failure or it may evolve into the last iteration of commitment.
- Commitment through failure: Edison knew that light bulbs were possible, Ford knew you could build an assembly line, NASA knew a human being could be put on the moon and returned safely, well with the word knew in this case we are now looking at the reality of knowing. Knew is believed. Believed is the commitment through failure. Apollo One exploded on the launch pad. They didn’t stop, well just long enough to mourn the three dead and move on.
Failure Models and Innovation/Innovators: It’s interesting as we consider the impact that commitment has on failure and vice versa that failure has on commitment. There are three types of commitment to, through and around that, I mentioned before. How the organization reacts to each of the commitments is, of course, the measure we talk about above. How the innovator reacts is an interesting reality. Edison failed more than 100 times as he chased the light bulb. He was invested in the success, and each failure made him work a little harder. There are reactions to failure that impact both the organization and the innovator’s commitment that are important to note.
· Failure = stop
· Failure = store idea and stop
· Failure = try things differently
· Failure = try again
· Failure = keep trying ad infinitum
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Do you from time to time fail?
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Yes
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No
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Was very useful for me to read so detailed description of processes connecting to innovations & startups!!! Sure that identification of the right market demands careful analysis.
Thank you!!! I suspect the reality of what innovators end up going through changes literally year by year!
failure isn’t about falling down; failure is staying down
I agree too many organizations don’t accept failure and they lsoe innovations!
this is a problem in European mindsets- they view failure as negative instead of a learning experience…
In fact, it can be both. But there is nothing wrong with realizing the path you are on just does not work!
if you make a mistake and learn from it, I don’t see it as failure so much as growth…
I think my friend, you are at a more mature level of accepting and moving through failure than most organizations are.
that’s probably because I learn from my mistakes
You always try to be informative with your posts DocAndersen. Thanks for highlighting that we need not fear failure if we are prepared to deal with it. It is all about facing every situation and do what needs to be done.
Thank you, yes I’ve learned that culture that accepts failure is stronger than one that does not
I have learned that working hard at making money as a content writer is actually all about innovations. You have to be quick and clever in coming up with ways to write the kind of articles that get accepted each and every time and I tell you sometimes it feels like there just cannot be any more words to say something but then the light bulb goes on and I continue writing. Of course, there are moments when I fail to get something accepted but then I have to learn from that failure and simply go on.
That is truly accepting failure and moving on. The reality of technology innovation is a lot easier at times than the world of freelance writing.
That is a tough market.
I am an excellent failure! If you are going to do it, you may as well do it well.
I am good at failure as well. I’ve been working on an application on my own time for nearly a year now. So far, it doesn’t work.
I am going to keep trying!
Competition is getting bigger and stronger and therefore, some kind of innovation is failing. Innovators need to be very persistent.
failure isn’t an end, it is just a chance to see ways that do not work.
I am fortunate that I often fail and fall, otherwise I might not know you and have a lot of discussion with you.
Innovation, marketing and markets… even huge company such Apple, Samsung, Honda, Ford, Toyota, Bridgestone etc. that supported by huge capital in R & D, and marketing have some fail products.
You are so right, Albert!
One of the things that shifted with this new market is the reality of how innovation comes to the market!
Even big companies fail.
How innovation comes to the market is a good thing for innovators and business people to learn today, isn’t it?
It is, I wish many more would. Fewer hard conversations for me to have.
How everything is written in detail …. you have to be really strong and a good innovator to keep … and you probably have to have money
money only matters if you stay ahead of the market. If the market catchs up to you, in the end you won’t need other money@
As far as I know, it is very difficult for our innovators … if something goes wrong, they usually run out of money to get the project completed
that is true, at times.
We all fail in life, but it is how we come back that makes the difference. And the lessons learned from our failures.
That is a reason some places accept and do well with innovations and others fail. It is ok to fail, if you learn!
I completely agree with you. It is all about our come back,
I work with companies that have a wonderful open attitude towards mistakes.
I have had this kind of lecture in my university when i was doing my MBA
I created all of this including the math! 🙂
Everyone has his or her set of ‘failure’ but how one reacts to it make the difference. Nice lecture btw. And if I may add, Edison was more of a businessman than a man of science ?
Edison said he never failed. He just found ways that didn’t work. Failure is always an option, its how you deal with failure that determines your path forward.
The reference about Edison was a joke in relation to the fact that there were inventions copyrighted to him but belong to other inventors ?
understood 🙂 innovation is sometimes having the name rather than the idea.
As every business person I have had my failures. But it is very unfortunate when people who you think are close help you.
It is ok to fail, you learn from failure. But when you can help another, that is awesome!