Building an Innovation Culture: Risk, Fear & the Role of Failure

  Innovation  

Many organizations prefer not to share the details or the frequency of their failed innovation initiatives. Only after sifting through disparate research we are able to piece together a sense of how frequently failure is the outcome and what we should really expect from an innovation success rate. When we realize that failure is a much more common outcome we also recognize that planning for only success can become an organization’s Achilles’ heel.  In this scenario failure has dire consequences to both the individual and the organization. By addressing these facts upfront we can learn to better deal with the underlying risks and fear that surround innovation failure. This session will review the data behind innovation failure, examine how risk / fear impact the individual, and discuss a few tools and techniques that organizations and individuals can use to address these challenges.

Matt Hunt is Founder and CEO of Stanford & Griggs, a strategy and innovation consulting firm located in Minnesota. Matt has over 20 years of business and technology experience with large companies, small companies and non-profit organizations.  The majority of Matt’s time is spent working with organizations large and small on building internal innovation capabilities and delivering innovation initiatives.  He also writes and speaks on the issues surrounding innovation, risk and the role of failure. See more on his blog at www.matthunt.co.  Matt has also co-founded a couple of local groups: the Innovation Salon – also focused on creating a community for local innovation practitioners and 2) The Phoenix Rising – a series of events that focus on building a local dialog around the importance of recognizing, admitting, and learning from failure.

 

Many organizations prefer not to share the details or the frequency of their failed innovation initiatives. Only after sifting through disparate research we are able to piece together a sense of how frequently failure is the outcome and what we should really expect from an innovation success rate. When we realize that failure is a much more common outcome we also recognize that planning for only success can become an organization’s Achilles’ heel. In this scenario failure has dire consequences to both the individual and the organization. By addressing these facts upfront we can learn to better deal with the underlying risks and fear that surround innovation failure. This session will review the data behind innovation failure, examine how risk / fear impact the individual, and discuss a few tools and techniques that organizations and individuals can use to address these challenges.