Reason for Innovation failure

"If not YOU, who? If not NOW, when?"
56 Reasons Most Corporate Innovation Initiatives Fail
1. "Innovation" framed as an initiative, not the normal way of doing business
2. Absence of a clear definition of what "innovation" really means
3. Innovation not linked to company's existing vision or strategy
4. No sense of urgency
5. Workforce is suffering from "initiative fatigue"
6. CEO does not fully embrace the effort
7. No compelling vision or reason to innovate
8. Senior Team not aligned
9. Key players don't have the time to focus on innovation
10.Innovation champions are not empowered
11. Decision making processes are non-existent or fuzzy
12. Lack of trust
13. Risk averse culture
14. Overemphasis on cost cutting or incremental improvement
15. Workforce ruled by past assumptions and old mental models
16. No process in place for funding new projects
17. Not enough pilot programs in motion
18. Senior Team not walking the talk
19. No company-wide process for managing ideas
20. Too many turf wars. Too many silos.

21. Analysis paralysis
22. Reluctance to cannibalize existing products and services
23. NIH (not invented here) syndrome
24. Funky channels of communication
25. No intrinsic motivation to innovate
26. Unclear gates for evaluating progress
27. Mind numbing bureaucracy
28. Unclear idea pitching processes
29. Lack of clearly defined innovation metrics
30. No accountability for results
31. No way to celebrate quick wins
32. Poorly facilitated meetings
33. No training to unleash individual or team creativity
34. Voo doo evaluation of ideas
35. Inadequate sharing of best practices
36. Lack of teamwork and collaboration
37. Unclear strategy for sustaining the effort
38. Innovation Teams meet too infrequently
39. Middle managers not on board
40. Ineffective rollout of the effort to the workforce
41. Lack of tools and techniques to help people generate new ideas
42. Innovation initiative perceived as another "flavor of the month"
43. Individuals don't understand how to be a part of the effort
44. Diverse inputs or conflicting opinions not honored
45. Imbalance of left-brain and right brain thinking
46. Low morale
47. Over-reliance on technology
48. Failure to secure sustained funding
49. Unrealistic timeframes
50. Failure to consider issues associated with scaling up
51. Inability to attract talent to risky new ventures
52. Failure to consider commercialization issues
53. No rewards or recognition program in place
54. No processes in place to get fast feedback
55. No real sense of what your customers really want or need
56. Company hiring process screens out potential innovators

After MBA- What Next?

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Let’s face it; the only true motivation behind doing an MBA is monetary.
It would be the rare person who actually means all the stuff he spouts when trying to answer or reason out his desire for pursuing a business education. I have heard every jazzy word out there in the dictionary, “add value”, “holistic perspective”, “further my prospects”, and “pursue my strengths”. Blah……… blah…………
I was conversing with a guest and far flung acquaintance of mine in my recent trip to Delhi. She is from the blue blooded place, and having an attitude that could well be considered obnoxious. Nowadays however she has tempered down, and was currently working for a B-school teaching, recruiting and placing. She was recounting one session, where the much berated down question of “Why MBA?” was returned with a rather unique response (not verbatim):

“I want to earn money, lots of it and I want to do it the socially revered manner of studying. I have worked for 5 years and now I realize that there is this acceptance that a business graduate is a fast learner. I do not believe it, however to fight in this world if a degree is required then I am prepared to get it. And yes, I am curious to know what 2 years of learning can actually teach me after 5 years of working and learning.”

Bingo, now isn’t that an honest reply. Before you wonder, yes, he got through.
For every wannabe manager out there studying marketing, finance or any other specialization offered one question lingers in mind when the study is in progress. Is this going to help me, is it really going to get me my dream job where I will be dazzling the world with my knowledge and insights?
I have been out for close to a year, and I can see some of the gaps in the expectations and the ground realities.
Knowledge and consequent work mismatch
Firstly, whatever is learnt in terms of specialization is at a very strategic level. The kind of work most end up doing is largely operational irrespective of the domain. And thus to a certain extent MBAs are seen as not being operationally efficient.

Maybe this is the same reason why most of recruitments happening for MBAs are in the field of business consulting, industry research and analytics. The traditional bread and butter sectors of manufacturing, banking etc. may thus not really augur well to a typical MBA.

Education is not Expertise
Secondly, specializations are only indicative of personal interest, they do not instantly make anybody a domain expert.

However, the sentiment in most of the aspiring managers is just the reverse of it, and thus the presence of the big “E” a.k.a. huge ego. Two years of education and they are out to defend the bastions of business established by gray haired veterans having a decade and a half worth of experience. This naturally would not augur well with anyone. You cannot command work or improvements; you would have to persuade them slowly and assiduously.

The above brings us to the obvious question: if whatever taught is neither of immediate relevance nor a substitute for expertise then is it really worthwhile pursing it?
The answer to this is a resounding yes, for the simple reason that nobody ever regrets spending two years in a business school. I have seen people patently unsuitable to be engineers, hating every minute of their education and in it only because of some compulsions. However I do not see that sentiment in a B-school. Here, you may hear cribs about the workload, lamentation about how expensive it is going to be but at the back of your mind you would be happy to make that investment in terms of time and money.
This is because it is the process of the above education that adds value to an individual. When you are continuously taught to evaluate any situation or decision objectively, considering a variety of factors, it structures the thought process.
So learning as applied to any new domain say finance, operations or marketing, no matter how new, becomes faster.