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MM March/April 2008
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DIALOGUE
Even the best innovations experience communication failures. By Rober t S. Duboff
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he data is clear. Success is difficult to maintain once it is attained. The precise percentage is naturally hard to pin down, but many estimates suggest that no more than one-third of new businesses survive
for 12 months. And the track record of all new product/service launches is even worse—less than 10% succeed. However, once a business is able to survive and then thrive, one might expect continuing success. In fact, the legal notion of creating a corporation was to provide immortality for enterprises. By this logic, the Fortune 500 should be a pretty stable group, right? The reality is that since the original list of the 500 largest corporations was published by Fortune magazine in 1955, less than half have survived. Findings are similar for the S&P 500 index of leading U.S. companies. The FTSE 100 in England, started in 1984, has even gloomier results for the biggest trying to maintain their status among the best.
MM March/April 2008
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27
EXECUTIVE
There is continuing pressure on businesses and marketing to be more “innovative.” The word is even one of the most frequently used with marketing—with more than 13.2 million hits for the combination on Google. Yet, despite all the buzz, the track record is bleak. That’s because most of
briefing
the focus has been misdirected; the issue is not about better inventions or more creativity. What is needed is a new paradigm: a combination developing the concepts and how they will be communicated. There’s been too much focus on the end products of innovation, and too little on the process of getting it to market the right way.
Why is that? Clayton Christensen’s The Innovator’s Dilemma (Harvard Business School Press,1997; reprinted by Harper Business) provides one answer. Success brings customers. And to maintain success, most businesses naturally...