Innovation Risk Reduction

Innovation Risk Reduction

It is often accepted as a fact of business life that innovation, technology development, and introducing new products to the marketplace will always be very risky business.  Managers and business owners who accept this belief without question will either avoid innovation (ensuring the future irrelevance of their company) or spend far too much money on something with far too little chance of success.

Risk is the probability of something happening multiplied by the intensity of the consequences.  Innovation becomes highly risky when there is a good chance of losing a large amount of money.  I manage innovation risk by attacking both fronts:  I reduce the cost of innovation while increasing the chances for success.

Three Secrets of Innovation

They're not supposed to be secret, but relatively few business owners, managers and investors seem to be aware of them. When they are understood and practiced at all levels in the organization, then innovation risk can be vastly reduced.  In fact, research or knowledge risk can be virtually eliminated.  When businesses fail, it may be a failure of technology occasionally, but it is always a failure of leadership.

Secret 1.  Be unwilling to accept high risk.  There is a better way.  Find it and use it.

The only real obstacle here is being unaware of the existence of other ways of doing it.  My clients immediately move past this obstacle and rapidly learn the value of this first secret.

Secret 2.  Knowledge is the asset.

A focus on prototypes, intellectual property, marketing, capital raising and so on can distract one from the real aim of innovation:  knowledge.  That is the asset one acquires with an investment in R&D.  Knowledge is what gives a company its competitive advantage.  Too often people forget this and fail to collect the asset that was purchased with so much time and effort (and money).  I teach businesses how to make sure they collect, retain, protect, distribute and profit from the knowledge they purchase. 

Secret 3.  You can learn more from "failure" than from an easy, uneventful success.  

Since every particle of knowledge helps your business succeed, being skilled in creating and using knowledge makes failure impossible.  Even a so-called failure can contribute significantly to your company's competitive edge.  My clients gain from me the success methodologies and tactics of creating valuable, relevant and highly reliable knowledge that reduce the cost of innovation, shorten the time, and reigns in the risk of innovative technology development.

Do I need Innovation Risk Reduction?

You are ready for innovation risk reduction if:

• you are an investor in a technology startup;
• you are developing a new technology or product;
• you are managing a company or a team involved in R&D;
• your project has missed milestones in the past;
• unexpected setbacks have occurred;
• technicians and engineers don't seem to know what to do on their own;
• you think the problem is finding qualified employees.