Why Your Innovation Initiative Will Fail

There are many reasons why your startup will fail, but the main ones are 1) you create a product or service no one wants to buy, and 2) you do not have a profitable and VAST business model.

Likewise, there are many reasons why your corporate or organizational innovation initiative will fail. Most of the time it's due to a mismatch between the innovator's entrepreneurial mindset and the organization's innovation culture.

The challenge is even greater since individual organizational units, or, in the case of multicampus universities, have different department, school and campus cultures. In organizations, typical cultural mismatches happen in engineering, sales, marketing, operations and finance. Everyone seems to be dancing to a different beat.

Some have described the Innovator's DNA.  Others note characteristics of the entrepreneurial mindset:

1. Personal growth relates to the size of the challenge, not the size of the kingdom. What motivates real innovators is the more exciting challenge, not the number of people reporting to them. The ‘size of the difference’ they will make is more inspiring than the ‘size of the business.’ They relish getting out of their comfort zone, and into the unknown.
   
   
2. The new direction is the challenge, not the destination. The challenge is the transformation vehicle for true innovators, and not a performance goal. They focus on legacy creation, not legacy protection. They ignore failures and are constantly looking at the progress made. They treat innovations reviews like performance reviews.
   
   
3. Be an attacker of forces holding people back, not a defender. Real innovators start by questioning the world order rather than conforming to it. They begin by confronting the forces holding everyone back, rather than living with it. The forces include mindset gravity, organization gravity, industry gravity, country gravity, and cultural gravity.
   
   
4. New insights come from a quest for questions, not a quest for answers. This discovery mindset searching for new questions drives real innovators away from more of the same. They fundamentally become value seekers; they look for value in every experience, in every conversation. They don’t seek prescriptions, they seek possibilities.
   
   
5. Stakeholders must be connected into the new reality, not convinced. True innovators tip stakeholders into adopting and even co-owning the orbit-shifting idea. They go about tipping the heart first, assuming the mind will follow. They seek smart people, who openly express their doubts, and then collaborate to overcome them.
   
   
6. Work from the challenge backward, rather than capability forward. Overcoming execution obstacles is combating dilution, not compromising, for these innovators. Their mindset is not ‘if-then’ but ‘how and how else?’ They convert problems to opportunities, and often the original idea grows far bigger than the starting promise.
   
   
7. Getting rid of your victim mentality.
   
   
8. Having the discipline to practice the discipline.
   
   
9. You relish the role of leading the charge. Being a visionary or an idea person is not enough; you have to be anxious to jump in and get your hands dirty. Most success stories in business are not about envisioning the next big thing, but about making that change happen. Investors and strategic partners look for entrepreneurs who can execute.
   
   
10. Able to balance right-brain and left-brain activities. Most technical entrepreneurs are left-brain logical thinkers, even perfectionists. Yet every business today needs a focus on visualization, creativity, relationships, and collaboration, which are normally in the domain of right-brainers. Successful and happy entrepreneurs have that rare whole-brain focus.
    
    
11. Enjoy being outside your comfort zone. New businesses are an adventure into the unknown. You need to be mentally prepared to enjoy the roller coaster ride, rather than face it holding your breath with your teeth gritted at every turn. Only then can you enjoy the thrill of victory when you survive a major turn, and be energized for the next one.
    
    
12. Proactively seek input, but make your own decisions. Great entrepreneurs seek out critical customers and industry experts, and actively listen, but are not afraid to trust their own judgment as well. Ultimately they accept the responsibility of “the buck stops here,” meaning they live by their own decisions, and never make excuses.
    
    
13. Willing and able to do a little bit of everything. Technology experts tend to have a very deep level of knowledge, but not very wide. If your real interests are not very broad, then building a business will likely be frustrating and expensive. Startups have limited resources, so the founders have to enjoy trying things, and learning from their mistakes.
    
    
14. Viewed by others as a successful problem solver. The best ideas for a new business are solutions to a real customer problem, rather than great ideas looking for a market. Creating a new business means tackling one difficult problem after another, until success suddenly appears. Entrepreneurs see problems as milestones to success, not barriers.
    
    
15. Don’t demand or expect immediate gratification. Seth Godin once said “The average overnight success in business takes six years,” and he is an optimist. For some entrepreneurs that success is financial, and for others it is a legacy of good deeds. Because it takes so long to get there, it is important to be happy with the journey.

Creating a culture of innovation must include SALT and PRICES

• Strategy
• Alignment
• Leadership
• Teams
• Process
• Recognition
• Incentives
• Champions
• Encouragement
• Structure
• Are you ready to innovate?

If not, here are 7 steps to creating a culture of innovation.

When these two are in synch, like two hands shaking, great things happen. When they are not, things get ugly and, in some instances, people lose their jobs. Or, at least they should and be replaced with effective leaderpreneurs since an underperforming innovative culture and a workforce that lack an entrepreneurial mindset is a failure of leadership.

Arlen Meyers, MD, MBA is the President and CEO of the Society of Physician Entrepreneurs.