Pursuing Innovation and Avoiding Stagnation: Three Principles for Doing It Right

Next time you feel uncertain about your prospects for turning an idea for a new digital product or service into reality, just remember: your company could be the next Apple or Amazon.

On the other hand, if you don’t act on that idea, it goes nowhere. Stagnation.

Failing to pursue innovation can set up your company for something worse than short-term failure: long-term stagnation. Pursuing innovation will at least provide a shot at success, if it’s done right. But not pursuing it means 100% chance of failure.

And when you decline to take action to create something new or to make something that’s already good into something better, you’re still making a choice—that is, a choice to do nothing.

For example, it may mean someone else grabs the opportunity that could have been yours. Or it can mean that your inaction eventually puts you irrevocably out of step with your market—and ultimately out of business.

How To Get on the Right Track—and Stay There

Any degree of success you achieve from pursuing innovation sure beats doing nothing and achieving zip. Here are three principles, along with some specific guidance, to set you on the right path.

#1: When It Comes To Innovation, Don’t Hesistate

Once you’re inspired, timing is everything. Give your idea a reality test as soon as possible. Begin an exploration process, the point of which is to (1) find out before you invest a lot of time and money whether your idea even remotely resonates with the market and (2) learn that as fast as you possibly can so you make the most of it.

If your idea is not looking viable, you want to get out and move on to the next one ASAP; if it’s showing some real promise, you want to move quickly on further development to get it to market. Here’s a real-world object lesson: remember when the camera and film company Kodak stubbornly refused to go digital? Even though they were actually the first to patent digital photography? It would be tough to find a better example of not seizing the moment—and losing big as a result.

#2:  Enlist the Experts

There’s no better judge of the potential of an idea than the people who are going to ultimately benefit from that idea. And that includes anyone who’s going to use it, sell it or otherwise engage with it. How does the thing you’re considering look to each of those audiences? Where are the weak points in every area? The best way to find out is to enlist help.

Here, again, you don’t want the perfect to become the enemy of the good. Depending on what you’re doing, you may not even need a working model of your product or down-to-the-last-detail description of your service. Your starting point can be as simple as putting together an informal focus group of interested parties and letting them react to what you have in mind. If it resonates with no one, cut your losses and go on to the next idea. If it piques some interest, you can feel confident about taking it to the next step.

#3: Fail Fast

Sometimes, you fail. Maybe you didn’t have the right idea after all. Maybe you didn’t ask the right people the right questions. Maybe your timing was just off, or there were other circumstances that were beyond your control. But whatever the reason, the important thing when you fail is to fail fast—and fail up. Don’t sit around licking your wounds; use what you’ve learned from the experience to move on to another idea, and create for yourself a better chance to succeed.

Get Help from the Experts at EX Squared

Find out more about failing forward, failing early and, ultimately, not failing: check out the webinar Why Your Innovation Strategy Might Be Costing You More than You Think, featuring EX Squared Global Director of Design J.W. Kim. You’ll learn how working collaboratively, getting customer feedback, and other best practices can improve your chances of success—and how EX Squared’s unique LaunchPad environment can help you reduce the risk and cost of pursuing innovation.