Stefan Lindegaard’s ten red flags for innovation

Stefan Lindegaard

There’s no surefire way to guarantee success in innovation. Stefan Lindegaard offers 10 helpful suggestions of common pitfalls to avoid. Here is an excerpt from an article that appeared featured by Bloomberg Businessweek on April 5, 2010. To read the entire article, please visit: http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/content/mar2010/id20100330_141589.htm.

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What are the signs that innovation in a company is set up to fail? Wouldn’t it be great to have a checklist on this? Unfortunately, innovation is too complicated and company-specific for one standard rule.

It is possible, however, to become better at spotting the signs of failure.

Here’s a list (in no particular order) of the red flags I look for when I talk with executives and innovation leaders trying to get an understanding of their corporate innovation capabilities.

[Here are five.]

• The lack of an innovation strategy: Executives and innovation leaders have failed to link innovation with overall corporate strategy. As a result, the innovation efforts have no clear direction, and there is not the necessary mix of incremental and radical innovation. No strategy, no focused effort, no results.

• No definition of innovation: Innovation means different things to different people. Every company should develop its own definition that fits its situation and should use this definition to build a common language for innovation initiatives.

• Too much focus on internal capabilities: The future of innovation is open and global. Who will understand this first? You? Or your competitors?

• Too much focus on open innovation: Yes, you need to go open, but open innovation is not the Holy Grail. A key to innovation success is the ability to combine internal and external resources and be in a position to act on opportunities.

• Internal silos are too firmly ingrained: If you cannot make innovation happen across your own business units and functions, how could you possibly expect your innovation to sing beyond your company borders?

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To read the entire article, please visit: http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/content/mar2010/id20100330_141589.htm.

Stefan Lindegaard is a Copenhagen-based speaker, network facilitator, and adviser on open innovation and intrapreneurship. He is the author of the book, The Open Innovation Revolution.