David Owens of Vanderbilt University‘s Owen Graduate School of Management outlines what his research has shown him are the the most common hurdles for innovation that a company might encounter:
- Failures of innovation are failures of ideas, and to meet this challenge companies need to train people to use the tools and processes that help them “think differently” and enable them to become better at generating and recognizing good ideas.
- A company’s social climate will determine whether an innovation succeeds.
- The company or organization needs a strategy for innovation.
- Innovation fails when a firm competing among a group of rivals in an industry fails to produce something customers want.
- For an innovation to succeed, it has to be technologically feasible.
He says: ”By learning to analyze these constraints in advance, turning from retrospective analysis to proactive strategy development, you can dramatically improve your chances of innovation success.”
