The Need for a New Approach

Abstract

Success rates across all types of human enterprise are low, and failing to improve:

• Innovation success rates are generally below 10%, and even when venture capitalists are carefully monitoring their investments, less than a third of innovations succeed. The vast majority (96%) of innovation efforts fail to beat their ROI targets (Doblin Group, 2005, 2012).

• The majority of enterprises report dissatisfaction with innovation performance (Arthur D. Little, 2013).

• Three-quarters of the CEOs of multinationals view external collaborative innovation as vitally important, but only half do it, and they only rate themselves as doing it “moderately well” (IBM, 2006).

• Eight out of ten new enterprises fail within 18 months (Wagner, 2013).

• Two-thirds of organizational “change” efforts fail (Kotter, 2008).

• Most marketing investments don’t deliver desired results — “95 percent of what we’re doing doesn’t work” (Pritchard, 2011).

• Only a minority of innovative ideas ever see the light of day and successful commercialization, even within leading innovators such as 3M and Google.

• Most enterprises don’t achieve sustainable competitive differentiation and advantage.

• Mature businesses often struggle to maintain “the love,” growth, and relevance.

• The public sector isn’t making enough progress in efforts to do more with less, even with input from highly successful private sector entrepreneurs and change agents.

• We’re facing a global crisis in youth unemployment, potentially creating a generation that’s economically left behind — a lack of job creation that is arguably a failure of entrepreneurship.

• In fact, mediocre results plague all sectors of human enterprise.

“Success or failure depends more upon attitude than upon capacity.”

William James (1890)