Why Innovations Die

Why innovations die............................

With 100 billion precious euros invested in the Horizon Europe budget for research and innovation from 2021-2027, the awkward question is always lurking in the shadows, ‘how much of this investment comes to nothing?’ The so-called Valley of Death, the dreaded graveyard of projects where they cost too much to develop and effectively become filed, redundant and forgotten must reveal some clues about why innovation falters. Beyond this, even with prototypes, even with launched products or services – sometimes the obvious is missed when attempting to create for industry.

By Richard Forsyth

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hilst the business mantra of the era seems to be ‘it’s OK, or can even be good to fail’ that obviously only rings true if we learn from and use failure. Indeed, failure is intrinsically part of scientific discovery, testing new ideas and trialling new technologies.

However, when projects are aiming to reimagine services and products to improve society, failure can be both awkward and embarrassing.

What’s more, the truth is that amazing inventions that have failed to make an impact in society are littered throughout history, many caught in that perilous space between the laboratory and the market, the dramatically described Valley of Death. However, the Valley of Death is just one potential trap in an innovation cycle, which is a perilous and long journey, rife with potential to get things wrong.

There are many immediate clues to why some innovations do not transcend the boundaries to industrial, commercial or any form of success. Commercialisation, the business world, can often be a leap too far for academia to bridge. So what needs are projects not taking into account, for them to fail to pervade into the world beyond the university bubbles? One statistic claims that only an estimated 1 in 5,000 to 10,000 innovations make it through the Valley of Death to market implementation, and even those that do make it, often fizzle soon after in obscurity, or because they are not marketed, or they are superseded. Innovation can die at many stages, from a realisation it’s not feasible, to failing to create a prototype, to failing to understand its cost, value or even if it will be wanted by industry. We need to take a hard look at those touchpoints where invention dies, because frankly, this is the most likely outcome.

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Falling into the money-pit Innovation is risky financially, and there are rarely open taps of money that don’t at some point need to be turned off to prevent further losses. Commercialisation takes brave and sustained investment and the innovation process itself can often simply run out of cash as investors exhaust their patience and coffers with a project, however brilliant and promising. Development is often measured in years and even if a project makes it to the creation of a viable product or service it can still be tottering on the edge of the Valley of Death’s unforgiving canyon walls for a decade beyond that benchmark. An awareness of a company’s appetite and capability for the long game, coupled with a shrewd understanding of navigating public and government funding will be qualities that could literally pay dividends one day.

With just a prototype, the first 3 to 5 years would require investment and there would be no return on that. It’s been toted that around 90 percent of start-ups fail within the first three years, because they lack venture capital backing, and if a business model is lacking, they will fail to reap any kind of return.

Deep pockets are more commonly in short supply. It is critical to understand how finances are possible for at least five years and sustained pitching and hustling for investment is recommended whether to business angels, partners or public bodies and the government, as part of the on-going process. There can be ‘tucked away’ grants, but they won’t magically appear, they have to be rooted up and exploited. There is also a point where failure must be accepted if the progress and projections look starkly grim. Sometimes no amount of wishing can make a case for success.

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There are many immediate clues to why some innovations do not transcend the boundaries to industrial, commercial or any form of success. Commercialisation, the business world, can often be a leap too far for academia to bridge.

Bad timing ruins the moment A common reason for stumbling innovation is simply because the market is not ready for it. Take electric cars. The technology is clearly here today and we insist at a government policy level, that they must succeed. However, despite making progress the hard fact is that they rely on the need for a comprehensive infrastructure of charging points – without which they can be limited in range compared to petrol driven vehicles. When the supporting infrastructure is mature, the electric vehicle market can appeal to everyone, not merely a segmented demographic of green-minded consumers or penny-counting fleet operators.

In addition, unless there is a pressing need for your innovation to solve a genuine problem, it may be simply a novelty and not a revelation. People and businesses can often get by with familiar clumsier methods and products than your innovation looks to replace, because they already fulfil a basic need and are established. The market must be ready for your solution, for the change it presents. The

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business successes and pivots seen during the pandemic show clearly that the environment for innovation can be key to its success or failure.

For a commercial success, market research should not be marginalised. Rather than just looking at the advantages and unique selling points of your innovation, assess the disadvantages compared to existing technology and services. Have an objective view. What market conditions are needed for success, realistically? A difficult trend to accept is also that in the rush to be first with a technology, often the industry is not ready for the flawed first attempts, but the chances are they will be later on with following, matured, better designed and easier to integrate, similar technologies.

Off with the lab coat, on with the suit Finding a route to market involves the right partner or partners, the right plan and considerations for all the business aspects of commercial rollout, from legal and regulatory considerations to sales and marketing.

Distribution partners should be in the mix and an understanding of

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supply chain is also necessary. Innovations when scaled up can require manufacturing, importing, exporting and reselling so bridging from the lab to the market needs an acute understanding of business operations.

For completed, functioning innovation to become a business, critical moments of launching the innovation, marketing it, selling it, supplying it, and scaling up must be calculated. For SMEs and Start-Ups, knowledge of how to access a market is as crucial as funding. A problem can sometimes be that a project begins in the Public Sector, moves to Public-Private Partnerships and finally has to transcend to the Private Sector, in what could be described as ‘a dance of differences’.

As innovators, you may be clueless at the business-side, so it may be advisable to be conscious incompetents and find partners with the skills needed for Start-Up success. Being an innovator does not necessarily make you business savvy and that is worth knowing, to seek the right advice, in order to make wise early decisions before time and money is wasted, when pursuing commercial success. For ideas that are deemed potential failures by, for instance, a potential business partner, transparency of criteria for decision making would also be useful for sharing. Understanding why an idea falls short, yet has potential, may mean it simply needs to be redeveloped or reimagined.

Understanding ‘why?’ is everything There is power following a grander goal, aiming to change the world in some way. In this context, it’s worth understanding that so many innovations were born from necessity, almost accidently discovered or forced into existence whilst pursuing big aims. In 1969, Apollo 11 landed on the lunar surface with the help of the Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC). It was such an advanced innovation it paved the way to the entire computer industry. This was perhaps the commercial success story of the lunar landing, the birth of a global industry. Intel Corp would probably have never been founded without the R&D

from those space missions. Scott Hubbard, who worked for NASA for 20 years said: “Power consumption. Mass. Volume. Data rate. All the things that were important to making space flight feasible led to major changes in technology”. If you have a sense of true purpose in an industry, innovation can become a necessity uncovered. Focusing clearly on ‘why’ the innovation is needed can keep a project on the rails to commercialisation.

For commercial rollout especially; easy, fast and convenient is expected as standard. Since Apple’s revelation of using fingers to point our way through mobile phone options via touchscreens, we truly perceive the expectation to have intuitive tech. The basics for car design have not changed and that is because the design of steering wheel and pedals is universally accepted by everyone, is intuitive, and it works. It is now standard for designers to place heavy emphasis on human factors, on how intuitive, how easy the user interfacing is in innovation.

The rule is ‘simplify’, not to be mistaken with making it simple, but instead simplifying its use, design, operability. Everything from ergonomics, aesthetic appeal, to usability should be taken seriously if innovation is to appeal to us humans. Elon Musk, now the richest innovator in the world, understands the significance of how something looks, feels and is operated – from Tesla cars to space suits, it’s the details, the appeal and how something looks and feels that makes an innovation elevate from useable to desirable. It’s the same for services, as it is for products – think ‘human’.

For humans, consider human factors Great ideas are only great if people ‘get’ them and ‘use’ them. Take Virtual Reality. Here’s a good example of something that has been a product in many forms but seems ultimately to fail to meet its promise commercially. There have been so many attempts to make Virtual Reality an everyday household application but eventually all these VR concepts, some taken up by major companies and rolled out with fanfare and massive marketing, never really capture the mass market as hoped for, despite their brilliance.

The boldest attempt is PlayStation’s rollout of a VR headset, but even here, a year after its 2016 launch, CEO John Kodera revealed the VR market remained “below market forecasts”.

Similarly, Google stopped sales of their VR attempt, Daydream, declaring that ‘there hasn’t been the broad consumer or developer adoption we hoped for’.

One good reason for this is human factors. Wearing a device the size and weight of a full lunchbox from your eyes is not something most of us are prepared to do for long periods of the day.

“One of the main reasons why VR is not booming into the consumer segment is because of the uncomfortable, clunky headsets – even early VR adopters have complained of mental fatigue due to prolonged use of VR headsets.” An observation from tech commentator Prabhu Ram, Head - Industry Intelligence Group (IIG), CyberMedia Research (CMR).

Culture clashes, stakeholder engagement and miscommunication If you are targeting a market sector, you need to take into account the cultures in those sectors to succeed. A massive IT project rollout in the UK for the NHS arguably failed because of a clash of cultures and authorities, namely the people who run hospitals vs IT technicians. The publicly funded rollout of a unified health records system for British citizens was supposed to serve 40,000 GPs across 300 hospitals in one of the biggest IT projects in history. The system was supposed to be a dramatic transformational approach to replace the varied existing systems, rather than an evolutionary approach involving the healthcare operations at ground level. There did not seem to be an appreciation of how healthcare had been functioning. The stakeholders, the healthcare workers themselves were not really involved in the process of change. Who had authority, accountability and responsibility – the IT crowd or the GPs? Two very different cultures, that arguably did not harmonise to make this a success.

A takeaway from this catastrophic failure, is involve the end user before big decisions. Understand how they work and ask if there are reasons why your innovation will fail because it does not fit into the culture, flow and daily grind, because without adoption and acceptance, however good it is in terms of functionality, it’s ultimately pointless.

It is the hope of all project co-ordinators, scientists and inventors that there will be a positive legacy, that the project marks the beginning of something rather than an end. Likewise, there is pressure on budget allocators to create return on investment.

For innovation, which is science’s practical gift to the world and its citizens, it is clear that there is a vast and varied range of practical considerations needed for success, coupled with a broad understanding of markets, users and needs. The good news is that those research and development projects that do succeed can really change sectors for the better, and overall, make up for the failures.

One report by Science/Business found that with a broad economic analysis of long-term return on one euro of public investment in research, projects had a 20% return. So, despite the proliferation of failures in RoI, the successes make it all worth it in the grand scheme.

And of course, it’s not all about money. The science generated by projects can be priceless for our society and many a project that looks off to the accountants, is gold dust to engineers, visionaries, thinkers, developers and scientists who may need such steppingstones of knowledge for their own worthy endeavours.

A common reason for stumbling innovation is simply because the market is not ready for it.

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