“Failure is success in progress.” said Albert Einstein. Organizations need to celebrate failure as a milestone and keep trying.

Innovations fail because they missed the mark in either Right to Play, Desirability, Viability, Feasibility, or Timing. However, innovation successes are born from previous failures. Failures are therefore necessary, but here are a few things you can do to avoid that your innovation initiatives will be stopped after the necessary failures.

Innovation failures are attributed to different causes:

• No right to play. Colgate launched Kitchen Entrees in 1982 but people could not trust a toothpaste brand to produce frozen dinners. Disney branded Hannah Montana Cherries in 2009 but people could not see the association between entertainment and cherries.
• Product or services not desirable.
  • Sometimes the problem is not well defined or has not been validated by future customers. E.g. Mercedes-Benz launched the Mercedes Home Battery Pack in 2017 but realized later on that there was no use for a car battery pack at home because the car was not on the move
  • Sometimes the wrong choice was made on the feature and price mix. E.g., Xerox Alto was a networked PC system and customers preferred the cheaper IBM standalone PC.
  • Sometimes privacy, safety, or regulations were ignored. E.g. Google glasses (privacy), Hoverboard (safety).
  • Other times, the product or service offering was incomplete to stand on its own and no integrated offering was available. E.g., Motorola and Apple launched Rokr E1 in 2005 but users did not like it because they could not download songs from the web. Microsoft launched Kin One and Kin Two in 2010 but the phone had no applications.
• Not technically feasible. Sometimes engineers just can’t make it work. E.g., Apple and GT Advanced Technologies could not make the Sapphire iPhone Screens work in 2014.
• Not financially viable. E.g., Iridium launched in 1998 Iridium Satellite Phones but the price was too high to increase adoption. E.g., Google/HTC adopted an unvalidated pricing model when they launched Google Nexus One in 2010; the phone was available as unlocked while this was not the norm in North America where networks generally subsidized part of the cost.
• Not the right time. E.g., Kodak was the first to have digital cameras, Xerox was the first to have the mouse PC and GUI but none of them launched the product in time, probably due to fear of cannibalization of their existing business. On the other hand, some organizations were unable to beat ‘first-mover’s advantage.’ E.g., Microsoft Zune failed because people were used to Apple iPod, the New Coke failed in 1985 because people preferred the original Coca-Cola.

Is innovation failure useful?

While innovation failures happen because we failed in either Right to Play, Desirability, Feasibility, Viability, or Timing, innovation successes tick all these boxes. However, it is important to note that all innovation successes are leveraged from previous failures. As an example, iPhone was born from Apple Newton failures⁴. The only difference between innovation success and innovation failure is perseverance. Innovation success is a long journey made of failures, failures, and failures, then finally, of success. Innovation failure is necessary to reach success.

How to make your innovation program successful?

What stops innovation is the naysayers⁶, discouragement, and ignorance. The more you change minds about the worth of failures within the organization, the more you will succeed. Besides, innovation is rarely achieved by a sole genius; this is a team effort across the organization, bringing supporters along in your innovation efforts.

There are 5 things you can do to make your innovation program a success:

1. Educate CxOs about the importance of innovation and failures. Create a network of innovation champions within and outside the organization (for example, involve customers). Educate the organization on key areas to pay attention to (Right to Play, Desirability, Feasibility, Viability, Timing) when testing ideas and help them continuously search for problem solution market fits. Preferably use short podcasts and videos to communicate. Consider involving a third-party provider to animate the community of innovators.
2. Organize an ideation challenge across the whole enterprise. Sometimes the best ideas come from the most unlikely sources. Launch an ideation platform with self-paced trainings for employees to upskill in innovation, learn how to define and validate a problem, how to create ideas and test those ideas with customers (Right to Play, Desirability, Feasibility, Viability, Timing). Publish insights from private data¹ and external sources on market adjacencies, trends, new applications of technologies to spark ideas within your organization.
3. Assign a project manager to manage the funnel of ideas. Innovation can be messy, innovators can be all over the place, we need their creativity, but we also need someone to assess and prioritize ideas. Ask employees to assign a CxO as sponsor to each of their ideas. If no executives in the company supports the idea, archive the idea. Let the crowd and EC members surface the top 5 ideas.
4. Facilitate prototyping, surveys, tech scouting to support EC members in pursuing their ideas. Ask executive leaders to fund the development of prototypes that will transform their business.
5. Analyze and celebrate failures! Celebrate failures as stepping stones. No success is achieved without previous failures. Henry Ford once said that ‘Failure is only the opportunity more intelligently to begin again.’ Instill resilience and ‘begin again’.

Failures are necessary for Innovation to succeed. Let’s remember that the iPhone was born from Apple Newton failures. Leverage from the collective genius of the organization, educate the organization and give your colleagues the tools they need to define and validate problems, test their ideas against Right to Play, Desirability, Feasibility, Viability, Timing. Celebrate failures and ‘begin again!’