In today’s digital age, business executives collect reams of data as they try to develop the next must-have product for consumers, yet corporate innovation efforts remain painfully hit or miss.
A recent McKinsey poll found that 84 percent of global executives said innovation was extremely important for business growth, yet 94 percent were dissatisfied with their own innovation performance.
Why do so many innovation initiatives fall flat?
Clayton M. Christensen, widely regarded as one of the world’s top experts on innovation and growth and author of the theory of disruptive innovation, says executives often fail because they study the wrong product and customer data, which leads them to unwittingly design innovation processes that “churn out mediocrity.”
He writes about this problem in a new book, Competing Against Luck: The Story of Innovation and Customer Choice, coauthored with Taddy Hall, Karen Dillon, and David S. Duncan.