Be very clear on your goals. Break those goals down into the smallest testable experiments. Start with the experiments where the greatest uncertainty exists with the greatest impact first. For each experiment set a clear hypothesis. Know (1) what data you're going to collect and (2) how you're going to collect it to confirm or disconfirm the hypothesis before you start. Make sure you have a control group. You need to know if the hypothesis was confirmed or disconfirmed because of the experiment and not because of some other factor. Experiments are not commitments. Make sure you can stop the experiment any time you want.





We need to move the narrative from:



"we tried a, b and c and failed - awesome job everyone!"

to

to "we tried a, b, and c, and learned x, y and z."

The successful innovators already get this. It is the unsuccessful ones, the not-yet-successful ones, who will be misled by lazy, populist slogans.



See also: Words matter. Our focus on failure will lead to failure. Let's change the language. Let's focus on success. Let's focus on learning. Let's focus on a scientific approach to innovation.We need to move the narrative from:The successful innovators already get this. It is the unsuccessful ones, the not-yet-successful ones, who will be misled by lazy, populist slogans.See also:

Failure, it seems, is in vogue.We're told to "fail forward fast", "celebrate failure", give our teams "permission to fail", etc.But have we gone too far? Have we inadvertently started idolising failure?It is true that failure is inevitable in innovation. Just as risk is inevitable in earning investment returns.But we should not lose sight of the fact that our ultimate objective is success rather than failure; returns rather than risk. Failure and risk are means to an end, not ends in themselves.I recently heard of an organisation who set a KPI target that "at least 90% of innovations must fail". I think I know what they were trying to achieve. They wanted their staff to be bolder. Less incremental. And that would mean tolerating higher levels of failure.But to actually encourage - mandate even - more failure is perverse. The obvious unintended consequence is that staff will be encouraged to sabotage perfectly good innovations!Catchy phrases lauding failurea purpose. That purpose was to break the mindset that failure was unacceptable. To reintroduce failure as an acceptable cost of innovation. But now I fear they have taken on a life of their own. And it is not good for business. Or for innovation.To quote Frederic Etiemble, "a good idea doesn't have to become a dogma". ( Source The original intent of those catchy phrases was to enable learning by doing. Its time we focused our attention back on that original purpose.Innovation does not require failure. Innovation requires you to run experiments. Experiments don't succeed or fail. They produce results from which you can learn.What we really want, is a more scientific approach to innovation.In science, experiments don't fail. They either prove or disprove an hypothesis. Or they're inconclusive. Either way, we learn something.Scientists don't just throw random chemicals into test tubes and hope something interesting happens. Research programmes are carefully planned and structured.So how should we go about innovating in a more scientific way?