Why innovative new products fail? Because marketers believe they know the industry, the product market and the customers and their needs. And after going through cycles of input gathering, any original innovative ideas were ultimately turned into something a lot like their existing products with minor improvisation. Sounds familiar?
Idris Mootee innovation failure customer insightsIt has been a spectacular year for books about mistakes and learning from them. Here’s the list of must-haves:
1. Brilliant Mistakes, Paul Schoemaker. Five years after publishing a terrific HBR article on the subject, Schoemaker celebrates mistakes as, in Joyce’s words, “portals of discovery,” a way of navigating through a largely unpredictable world.
John Caddell book review books mistakes failure successThis weekend I spent a bit of time with Andrew Zuckerman's work and (courtesy of Maria Popova) listened to this talk he gave at this year's 99% conference which contains a series of fantastic insights into his view on the creative process, wonderfully illustrated by soundbites from his work, most notably the Wisdom and Music projects.
Neil Perkin success failure inspiration creativityThis is the last post in a mini-series about the F word – failure, that is.
(Previous posts relayed insights about managing yourself through awareness and assessment and managing others with clear expectations and empathy.)
Denise Lee Yohn failure HBR organisational behaviourIt might seem ironic that the venerable Harvard Business Review, a publication from an institution that has produced many successful leaders, would devote an entire issue to failure as it did last month. But given how much research and work has been done on the subject, it turned out to be one of the best issues of the journal I’ve read in a long time.
Denise Lee Yohn failure HBR leadership organisational behaviour people workplaceFred Wilson tells the story in this extraordinary post of how his investment company, Union Square Ventures, missed the opportunity to invest in Airbnb, one of my favourite peer-to-peers. At the time, the founders had ideas but the service was still a marketplace for air mattresses on people's floors. It was, he says, the classic investor's mistake of focusing too much on what the business were doing at the time and "not enough on what they could do, would do, and did do".
entrepreneurship failure Neil Perkin start-ups venture capitalistIn our society FAIL is a four-letter word.
Yet, when I gave my CU Commencement Speech, Dare to Fail, I was blown away by the conversation it started. So many people reached out with stories of their own failures and the powerful things they learned. Failure is in the air.
John Winsor failure wisdom of crowds sharing learningWatch this video by Bruce Nussbaum, BusinessWeek's innovation editor and veteran employee with the company. It's a fascinating illustration of the shifts in business we are seeing in real time. Media outlets in particular have been on the front lines of this shift. As I've said many times before, the Web and its latest social iteration has introduced ultra deep and pervasive niche content and experiences which directly compete with many business models.
BusinessWeek data analysis David Armano ecosystems failure filteringManagement gurus have often suggested that failure should be rewarded (if the individual was trying something new), or at least not punished. We all know the problems that develop when employees become fearful and conservative – creativity is stifled, and performance suffers.
brain failure management mistakes neuroscience Roger Dooley successDo you remember the ending of the second Matrix movie, when Neo learns that he's an anomaly in the program, and is supposed to go find Zion, or the CPU, or whatever, and mess everything up? I just figured out that this was advice on marketing strategy, courtesy of the Wachowski Brothers.
variability success Jonathan Salem Baskin failure
