Working with dozens of corporations on their open innovation journeys has taught us that the majority of open innovation activities fail for five main reasons:

1. An attempt to go solo: Success starts and ends with the management’s involvement and commitment to the open innovation process. When they lead by example, their ongoing support places an emphasis on the importance of innovation across its teams, allowing innovation managers to engage the entire organization. When they don’t, innovation managers struggle to gain the support of team members and hit brick walls  repeatedly, especially when seeking to advance new initiatives and make an impact.

2.Fear of change: It’s not a secret that people usually don’t like change. Although innovation has a buzz around it, at the end of the day, you will be needing to convince company stakeholders on what and how they can do things differently. A lack of understanding of the innovation manager’s role and responsibilities poses many obstacles. When team members do not comprehend why innovation managers do what they do, they often resist change processes and withdraw support from new innovations, preventing successful implementations.

3.High expectations vs. slow performance: Innovation tends to match executives’ expectations for brainstorming speed, but the development side of innovation takes far longer than this model allows. Implementing new solutions takes time and money, and sometimes several pilots must be conducted before a best-fit solution can be reached.

4.Steering the ship –  Innovation related KPI’s too often take the back seat to immediate revenue- driven KPI’s. This creates a difficult incentivisation scheme across the organization, as innovation is a marathon which requires stamina and perseverance. This is especially iminent when external sources join forces to promote open innovation and there is often a lack of clarity regarding the organization’s vision and which KPIs must be promoted. As such, disappointment is an unfortunate, yet likely result.

5.Perfectly Unbalanced: Startups move fast, while corporations move slow. New changes and paradigms are quickly adopted by startups, whereas corporate transformation takes several years. This is because startups are established with a specific goal that they would like to achieve and they are very focused on how to reach that goal. An established company must adhere to stricter processes and regulations, and too often have long bureaucratic processes that can squash the innovation spark. Innovation success can be broad and subjective; there are no real success points, but rather conditions that you can use to define and measure the metrics that are important to your company, team, and target audience. It’s up to you to come up with the best possible strategy and mix it with a positive, inclusive, and motivational organizational culture for your company, one that fosters growth and success from the outside in.