The Stress Of Innovation

As an innovation program gets ready to launch an idea into the market, the stress level within the team rises.  Stress is normal.  We start questioning the execution, the love of the idea …

• Is still the best idea we could have executed?
• Will the market respond to our idea?
• Have we done our best?
• Will our competitors trump us?
• Is this “the” killer innovation?

Questions are normal but it adds to the stress level.  Avoid playing “what if”.  If you start down the “what if” path, you will get yourself and your team distracted and worrying if the idea will be a failure.  Assuming you have put in place a sound innovation methodology (

area of innovation, 360 degree

process, an approach to

the ideas and a sound

process), then your innovation has a much higher chance of success.

Let's not fool ourselves, success is never guaranteed.  You can do everything right and still not change the world.  There are always things outside of your control (e.g. market timing) that will ultimately influence the success of your idea in the market.

To improve your likelihood of launch success:

• Keep your team focused on their respective tasks up to and through the launch
• Assign a person to deal with last minute escalations so that team members don't become overwhelmed
• Establish a means to share any/all communications impacting the launch so that everyone can accommodate the change within their area of responsibility
• Remain confident that your idea will be successful.  This will permeate through the team

As you can imagine, I've seen a few launches in my career.  Stay tuned as I share with you some “behind the scene” looks into the launch of a new innovation ….