“Any idea you can think of for a new product, I guarantee you that somewhere in the world there’s six other people thinking of the same thing.”

If those words from L.E.K. Consulting vice chair Stuart Jackson come as something of a reality check, consider also the challenges involved in achieving superior functionality to existing offerings, defining a market, and gaining those consumers’ trust. And that’s not to mention the incumbent channels, suppliers and even parts of your own organisation that will be “trying to find ways to preserve the current order of things”.

It’s little wonder then that the failure rate for new products is so high. Fortunately, however, there are steps you can take, as Jackson and co-author Ilya Trakhtenberg write in their new book Predictable Winners, to “systematically identify and retire risk at each step of the innovation journey”.

This week’s guest on Leadership Lessons, Jackson offers listeners advice on doing just that.

At the same time, he says, leaders also need to embrace a degree of uncertainty.

It’s a question of promoting a culture of experimentation, while at the same time leveraging “low-cost signals” to avoid overinvesting in concepts that are destined for failure. In the episode, Jackson explains what these signals might look like and where to find them.

Face to face with the challenges innovation can pose, many organisations might prefer to stick to their knitting - launching incremental upgrades or variations on existing products.

But while that approach is “certainly less risky in the short term…if you only do sustaining innovation, sooner or later somebody will come along with the next thing and you will be overtaken,” Jackson warns. “So it's short term, less risky, but perhaps longer term, much more risky.”

Credits:

Producer: Inga Marsden

Presenter: Antonia Garrett Peel

Artwork: David Robinson

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