Don’t fall into these innovation traps
Many businesses fall into these traps when innovating. Do you recognise these rabbit holes?
The FORGE methodology – Focus, Originality, Results, Growth and Ecosystem – are interconnected elements. The elements within FORGE are designed to help you diagnose problems and discover where things should be strengthened. Focus is all about chasing the right rabbit. It’s about picking one and focusing on that and nothing else. It’s about picking the right problem (not the solution) to focus on.
The Entrepreneur Within outlines in detail why companies fail to find focus and provides a framework to help them do so again (sign up to our newsletter for our 4Ps of Focus toolkit). Below is an abridged excerpt from a section called ‘Recognising the rabbit holes’.
RECOGNISING THE RABBIT HOLES
typically, businesses (forgive the overegging of the rabbit-chasing metaphor here) fall down a number of common rabbit holes as they strive to innovate at speed but without direction (velocity).
1. The scattergun approach
The name makes it clear. In this scenario, businesses conjure up a myriad of possible ideas and fire them off to see which ones stick. One theme that comes up alarmingly regularly is that businesses see so many opportunities or are working on so many different projects that there are never enough resources (or breathing space) for one thing to become great.
2. Falling in love with the solution
I see this a lot. There’s this shiny new thing. An amazing proprietary technology or product or service or idea that’s just waiting to shine. And why wouldn’t it? The myth here is that we convince ourselves that we have the best solution. We now just need to find the customers who will also realise how wonderful our solution is. There is an equally huge risk of falling in love with a solution that doesn’t have a problem big enough or valuable enough to be worth solving.
3. Nodding to the now
With the absence of a crystal ball, it is notoriously tricky to predict future consumer needs. Keeping the current category blinkers on is a surefire way to kill ideas before they’ve had a chance. Adaptation, tweaking and continuous iteration are fine for incremental innovation, but for anything more disruptive, we must consider future potential rather than current opportunity, based on the current market and consumer-shopper behaviour. Being too focused on the present may cause you to miss viable opportunities.
4. Assuming we have focus (when we don’t)
It’s all too easy for a business to assume there is a clear focus on innovation efforts when there isn’t. Most businesses will say they have an ‘innovation strategy’, few will be able to articulate it succinctly, and – we’re getting to the real essence of the problem – even fewer will allocate appropriate resources.
5. Stretching beyond your limits
Understanding your purpose, brand and business identity is a critical part of Focus. You need to stay true to who you are and what your business does. Avoid leaping into spaces that might be right for your audience but not necessarily right for you. Just because you can, doesn’t mean that you should.
The myth here is that consumers already think so highly of your brand that it can naturally stretch to all other aspects of their lives. It can be hard to ignore a new opportunity, but understanding that a brand – or business – can’t be everything to everyone is an essential element of Focus.
