“What fails and when? A process view of innovation failure” presents:
- A process conceptualization of innovation failure can help understand the diversity and consequences of failure.
- A model showing how two types of innovation failure (task and outcome) vary at four divergent-convergent phases ‘within’ the innovation process.
- A typology of four modes of innovation failure and associated learning processes:
– unsolicited failures (prevent-alert-eliminate);
– hazardous failures (predict-modify-mitigate);
– fortuitous failures (probe-expose-extrapolate); and
– excursive failures (facilitate-analyze-harness).
Research on innovation failure has proliferated lately but with little theoretical attention given to the diversity of the concept.
Using process theorizing, the article presents a model and propositions to understand how a firm’s anticipation and value toward failure depends on the type of failure (task versus outcome) and the phase (divergent versus convergent) and point (early versus later) ‘within’ the process that the failure occurs.
The two diamonds in the model show how thinking and outputs at different points in the innovation process are generated in a divergent way and then selected in a convergent way.
The first diamond in the model represents the problem space for the innovation process.
During this diamond’s divergent phase (i.e., left half), innovation involves discovering problems that motivate and guide the innovation project. For example, a project to redesign a shopping cart (we use this example to illustrate our process model and typology in the next section) would involve consulting with different stakeholders who use, own, and manufacture shopping carts to learn about their problems with existing shopping carts. The first diamond’s convergent phase (i.e., the right half) involves gathering, merging, and ‘narrowing down’ the previously identified problems. Sticking with the shopping cart example, the convergent phase involves assessing, combining, reducing, and selecting the problems with existing shopping carts to define the goals of the innovation project.
The second diamond in the model represents the solution space.
The first phase of this diamond (i.e., the left half) depicts the divergent nature of innovation as generating potential solutions to address the project goals. For example, innovation team members brainstorm, adapt, share, and iterate on various solutions to address the shopping cart safety, maneuverability, storage, and security problems. The convergent phase of the second diamond (i.e., the right half) is where innovation team members ‘close down’ on promising solutions. They evaluate and test cart design prototypes, refine the solutions, and use the learning and decisions in this phase to converge on and develop a final solution.
Using the anticipation-value stances, we then present a typology of four modes of innovation failure that can arise ‘from’ task and outcomes failure in the innovation process.
The four modes (and associated learning response) are unsolicited failures (prevent-alert-eliminate); hazardous failures (predict-modify-mitigate); fortuitous failures (probe-expose-extrapolate); and excursive failures (facilitate-analyze-harness).
Together, these contributions provide contingency oriented insights on how failure varies and journeys within and from the innovation process, which helps researchers and managers to better understand the related causes, effects and learning responses.
I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.
(Thomas Eddison)
Surtil : 