Four Reasons Executives Should Stop Innovating​

The first step in launching a successful new product is to avoid the common traps that nearly guarantee failure.
Leaders need to ask themselves why failed products were launched in the first place. How did leaders NOT see that some products were certain to fail.

BlackBerry’s Storm – May have cost BlackBerry up to $100 million in returns and warranty claims alone.

Google Glass – Estimates suggest that Google spent upwards of $150 million on its development.

Amazon Fire Phone – The company ultimately took a $170 million write-down on the phone and discontinued it less than a year after its release.

Microsoft Kin – Discontinued after only two months on the market. According to some reports, Microsoft spent more than $1 billion on the project.

Pepsi Crystal – According to some reports, Pepsi spent more than $40 million on developing and promoting Crystal which was launched and discontinued twice.

Juicero – It is estimated that the company raised over $120 million in funding before going out of business.

There are often four factors that result in the investment and launch of a dismal failure.

1) Company leadership believes it has no other options
2) It’s CEO’s pet project
3) The product requires an impractical change consumer/user behavior
4) The company has perverse incentives that supports bad ideas