Innovation often fails. The rate of new technologies or business ideas is estimated at between 50 percent and 90 percent. The success rate of large technology projects is consistent with these findings, hovering at around 30 percent year after year.
At the same time, is critical to a company's success, if not survival. Fortunately, we can learn from companies that have created grand successes, reinventing how organizations and individuals use technology. While your innovations might not revolutionize an industry, you can still make innovation a natural and successful part of doing business.
A key insight from successful innovators is that their innovations are never wacky ideas. Innovations that work derive from a clear insight about a problem that needs solving, and they're linked to a strong implementation capability.
Where brainstorming is designed to generate an idea a minute, innovation requires a focused commitment to executing a single idea. (For more on finding new ideas, see ".")