Success has many parents
but failure is a b………d

Personnel research has shown that there is frequently a rush to collect a talisman of success. Promote and move a manager, and ex-colleagues rush to pick up his old desk organizer, chair, cubicle, corner office, but fire someone and no-one goes near!

It’s like that with new product development too. There’s always a rush to claim credit for success and it’s understandable that everyone wants to get in on the act from project champion to the previously hostile manager who tried to kill the idea at Stage Gate 2. And that’s just the producer company. Look at any famous success and count the number of case histories claiming it at market research, pack design, advertising and even innovation consultancies!

Success has many parents but failure, as we all know, is a bastard, an illegitimate, unloved child.

That fear of failure or even association with failure can be so powerful as to overcome logical management. Some years ago, I observed at close hand the launch of a food product into test market. Trial rates were very high but repeat purchases almost non-existent, the result of a serious but overcomeable manufacturing failure. But the rush to sever all connections with the failure was so great that the remedial work was never undertaken, the product withdrawn but not re-launched and eventually a competitor successfully launched a near identical product.

Earlier this year at the Coca-Cola Annual Meeting, Chairman and CEO Neville Isdell was quoted as saying “you will see some failures” “this is something we must accept as part of the regeneration process”. A powerful message to his company and a powerful reminder to us all.

Here are my two failure mantras:

- Unless we accept some degree of new product failure our teams will become so risk adverse that stagnation will follow.

- It’s only a failure if we do not learn from it.

I earn my living helping clients succeed in innovation, but I know the importance of failure. Just don’t let it be on my projects too often!