Published on the 25/10/2018 | Written by Heather Wright
As is following through when projects show hope…
Following through on innovative ideas is tough, particularly for big companies, and killing off ‘innovation zombies’ can be even tougher.
That’s according to a new report from technology recruitment company Harvey Nash, which includes a look at the life span of an innovation – from idea to testing and proving the value of the idea and then scaling up.
The Harvey Nash Technology Survey, which claims to be one of the largest tech surveys in the world with 2070 respondents (seven percent of whom were from Australia and one percent from NZ) from CTOs to software developers to robotics engineers, says only one in 10 good innovative ideas make it to commercial success.
“The combination of low success rates for innovative ideas and the high chance of zombie innovation projects is resulting in innovation fatigue.”
That figure comes despite a full 76 percent of respondents believing their organisations are either ‘very effective’ or ‘quite effective’ at identifying innovative ideas. Sixty-seven percent say their organisation is quite or very effective at testing and proving the value of an idea and when it comes to scaling up those proven ideas the success rate drops again, this time to 61 percent.
Linking together into a single chain of activity gives a 31 percent chance, roughly speaking, that a great idea will be identified, tested and scales up to at least a ‘quite effective’ degree, Harvey Nash says. “And if you prefer your organisation to be ‘very effective at these three things – and in the world of innovation you really should), the chances of a great idea making it all the way through shrinks to one percent.”
Size mattes when it comes to innovation, with the report confirming the long-held belief that smaller companies are more likely to be innovative: Companies with less than 100 employees were most likely to say their companies were quite effective or very effective across all three categories of identifying new ideas, finding ways to test them and scaling them.
The report also finds that once an innovation project is underway, it can be hard to stop it, with four in 10 organisations having ‘zombie’ innovation projects – poorly performing projects that are sucking time and effort away from ones that could work.
The combination of low success rates for innovative ideas making it to commercial success, and the high chance of zombie innovation projects is resulting in innovation fatigue.
Harvey Nash says with just a one in 100 chance of a good idea becoming successful and a four in 20 chance of zombie innovation projects, it’s no surprise many people are cynical about ‘innovation’.
The report also hints at what Harvey Nash calls ‘fractures’ in tech teams, and an emerging ‘dividing line’ between those with outward-looking roles driving innovation and customer engagement and those with inward, operations-focused roles.
It says only one-fifth of technology leaders are creating an effective vision and strategy for their organisations, something Harvey Nash warns is ‘clearly bad news for many tech leaders’ given the importance for teams to feel aligned to strategy. “All our research tells us it’s one of the key motivating factors, alongside interesting work and money.”
