The path to failed innovations

How much do companies consider their customers when they're coming up with new products and services?

One of the blogs I enjoy reading, by the idea factory Brainstore, recently brought up an article about how much of the innovation in Germany is done without the input of customers.

The article's in German, but Brainstore's co-founder and blogger Nadja helpfully translated a bit:

[The article says] that most companies in Germany are developing their innovation without listening or talking to customers first. Most companies highly underestimate the ability of consumers or B2B clients to participate in innovation, states the spokesman of the German Innovation Counsel, Axel Glanz.

My always-handy dictionary revealed that (loose translation):

...the people who are directly responsible for innovation in a company are often the furthest away from the market, especially in financial and automobile sectors... the consequences are obvious because more than 70% of innovations fail--costing companies oodles of money.

Brainstore is absolutely right in highlighting this, because 30% is a lousy success ratio.

Imagine if a factory had to discard 2 out of every 3 widgets they made.  Or if 33% were sufficient to pass a class at university.

In fact, .33 is only a good percentage in baseball--a sport where a small ball comes whizzing past at over 90 mph!

But this isn't only a problem in Germany...

Here are a couple stand-outs examples of innovations that were made without involving the customer at all.

The Amphibious Car
It's a two for one deal, screams the ad!  A car... and a boat!  An exciting idea, with James Bond potential--but not something that people wanted to buy for their everyday life.

In reality, it wasn't a great car, or a great boat.  Forget water-skiing and it was too small for just going out to float on the lake.

The Color Copy Machine
When 3M invented the color copy machine in 1972, they were really excited and thought it would be a smashing success.  Except that no one even used color printers in those days--so there was nothing to copy!  Whoops!

In fact, the color copy machine was dropped by 3M because it was such a miserable failure.  Xerox couldn't even find a market for it until the 1980s.

The Dinner-time Hair Holder
This beauty is just so special it had to make the list!  Great for date night!

It goes great with the umbrella-holder hat and the tissue dispenser hat for those days when allergies are rampant!  In fact, if you want to see some other priceless failed innovations from Japan, go here.

Innovation is absolutely essential to stand out in a crowded global marketplace--but it's also a frustratingly failure-prone process.

But many companies--like the ones profiled in the German article--never set themselves up for success.  A cool invention or flashy new product is worthless when no one actually wants to buy it!

Comments

[Julia]

What a funny article. I love the hair holder! It's interesting how such an innovative product, like the color copier, just came out at the wrong time.

At BrainReactions we give companies a chance to hear from the customer--through customer brainstorms--what it is that they respond to. Any individual can also take advantage of collaboration and idea generation by visit http://www.brainreactions.net.

Hi Jula, Brainstore is definitely a cool company. I love how they use the internet to harness creativity. I have to say though, that I don't think there will ever be a "right time" for the lovely hair holder!

[Thom Quinn]

Thanks for sharing this as I can not read German.

As a Creativity Catalyst, I've worked with several clients who also have this problem: their team is amazingly innovative, but they failed to conduct due diligence to find out if anyone really would want to PAY for their uber-cool product or service. Problem definition is critical. In the marketplace, the right solution to the wrong problem can be worse than the wrong solution to the right problem.