Case 10.1: Finding the "Success Formula" for Innovation

Purpose:
The purpose of this case it to understand the major roadblocks in the innovation process.

Situation:
The CEO of a company has just commissioned a study of innovations that have "worked" in the organization. He exclaims:

I just finished reading the chapter on innovation in Communicating for Managerial Effectiveness. It helped me pinpoint one of my deepest frustrations about this organization:

There are few too many ideas that never make it to the implementation stage. I want to know why. I can't seem to figure it out. We've got good people here. What I'd like you to do is research three cases in which innovations have "failed" for some reason and three cases in which the innovations have been successfully implemented. I want you to interview or document each case so that we have some rich historical background on each situation. I'll leave it to you to define success or failure. Based on these six cases, I'd like you to give me ten specific guidelines about how to improve the innovative climate at this organization. My new motto is going to be, "Innovate or Stagnate". But I need more than a slogan to motivate the employees. The book provides a good general background but what I need are specifics about our company. That is why I'm so intent on having well documented cases. Then we can extrapolate from these situations the precise nature of the problems we are encountering. You might want to take a careful look at the notion of "diffusion of innovation". Maybe it has something to do with our problems.

Objectives:

1. Using an organization with which you are familiar,
   1. identify three successful innovations that have been implemented.
   2. identify three innovations that have failed.
   3. explain the reasons for the successes or failures.
   4. create a list of "Ten Guidelines to Improve the Innovative Climate" in an organization.
2. Specify the approach you would use in presenting your results to the CEO.
3. Provide your rationale for the research findings and the approach you would use with the CEO.