Why Innovation Fails: Hard-Won Lessons for Business

By Carl Franklin

Book Overview

The internet bubble spawned hundreds of ideas that subsequently crashed and burned, sending huge amounts of investors' money up in smoke. In the offline world, companies continue to invest millions... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1904298087
• ISBN13: 9781904298083
• Release Date: January 2003
• Publisher: Spiro Press
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 1.18 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.4" x 8.7"

Customer Reviews

Practical commonsense for anyone involved in innovation

Why Innovation Fails is a practical guide reminding us of the many almost obvious reasons causing so many innovations to fail. The book is easy reading, and not academic. At first I was disappointed by this, but the book fits together well and has a seriously useful questionnaire at the end. The books uses examples from the dotcom bust and other modern ideas (the iPod is presented as an innovation that did work). It focuses on why people reject or aren't interested in technical innovation. The questionnaire, for example, asks the innovator to describe a typical early adopter, a typical late majority adopter and to ask what they each want from the innovation. This focus on the launch and growth phase of the product is typical of the book's emphasis on the consumer experience. There is some discussion of types of consumers (early adopters etc), and lots of summaries of key books in the area. My overall impression was that at my company, we need to use more common sense and get more customer research. The book is oddly positive, a message being that if innovations doomed to failure and spotted and killed earlier, more resources will be available for innovations that can succeed.When I rate books, four stars is "highly recommended".