The simple fact of the matter is that more startups fail within their first five years than succeed. Not failing is actually a lot trickier than you might expect, despite your best intentions.
Over the next few posts, I’ll share some of the Startup Perils I’ve seen first hand. I would say “learned from”, but then I probably wouldn’t still be working with startups if I had truly learned my lesson.
It’s time to wrap up the series of posts on innovation for now… I’ve tried to lay out some of the processes I’ve seen work and identify the most common pitfalls. In summary: Every long-lived company eventually innovates. It’s up…
Like Stage 2, more often than not, Stage 3 never happens at all. Also like Stage 2, folks from Stage 3 often get involved too early in the process. It’s very simple: focusing on costing and execution at the idea stage never works. Ever. The place for that is Stage 3: Production.
More often than not, Stage 2 never happens at all. The idea stage often ends up being driven by a huge committee and almost every idea gets killed before it grows. When Stage 2 does happen, it’s usually mixed up with the Idea Stage. Unformed ideas get engineered before they are ready and the result is a mess…
When talking about innovation, everyone focuses on ideas. The very meaning of innovation has become inseparable from raw ideas for most people. However, innovation is actually a process with 3 stages: ideas, development and production. The nature and tasks for each stage are quite different. Let’s explore Stage 1: The Idea Stage.