Innovations Tensions

Introduction

Successful entrepreneurs (like Steve Jobs, Oprah Winfrey, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, etc) do possess
"...a rare combination of intellect, determination and such other entrepreneurial capabilities as flexibility and a high tolerance of risk..."
Christopher Bingham et al, 2022a

However, they have their fair share of failures; some examples of failures with Amazon (Jeff Bezos) include

- Amazon Options as a competitor to eBay

- Amazon's fire phone (smart phone)

Most innovations fail
"...- more than 90% of high-potential ventures fail to meet projected targets
     - roughly 75% of products released each year bomb
     - few established organisations remain dominant over time
    - few generate above-average shareholder returns for more than a couple of years..."
Christopher Bingham et al, 2022

Successful innovation can be elusive and appear like 'hit or miss'.

The most popular given reasons for innovation failure are

- lack of talent (including creativity, etc)

- lack of resources (like money, etc)

- lack of luck (like timing, etc)

- too many unknowns (like destabilising forces including uncertainty, volatility, complexity, etc)

- unconscious bias (based on own assumptions, beliefs, perceptions, habits of mind and thought process that can prejudice your thinking, eg we all have our preferred options, preferred causality, etc) (for more details see elsewhere in Knowledge Base)

NB It is interesting to note that there is strong evidence that resource constraints foster creativity and innovation.

Some investment banks work on the hypothesis that having a couple of successes in every 10 investments will be enough to cover the failures.

There are 8 productive tensions or trade-offs that need to be handled for innovation to be successful, ie

i) flexibility or discipline

ii) differentiate or borrow ideas

iii) source innovation internally or externally

iv) accept data or ignore it

v) develop without becoming bureaucratic

vi) framing innovations effectively

vii) promoting your brand or solving someone else's problem

viii) keeping stakeholders on side during the change.

NB There is no one correct solution/answer/appraoch as it will depend upon context, circumstances, etc.

Rapid changes in technology, consumer behaviour and demand, etc can turn core capabilities or competencies, ie what you are best at doing, into liabilities.

Some questions that need answering

- How do you excite a market about a product they have never imagined?

- When do you accept the data, or ignore it?

- How can you retain stakeholders' trust and support during radical unforeseen changes?

A dynamic environment is characterised by novelty, resource constraints, unpredictability, ambiguity, uncertainty, unknowns, etc.