Expert analysis outlines 25 common practices causing innovation failure, indicating the need for mathematical and user-centric frameworks.
Summary We present twenty-five insanities practiced by innovators that effectively lead to failure of innovation. These “dubious solutions” were published separately on LinkedIn are now united and summarized in this article, drawn from my practice as a consultant, MBA teacher, and author since 1999, and are supported by the numerical mathematical logic theory that I developed, S.I.T.®© - Self compare Ideas Theory, presented in the book "The Innovation Balance®©". The founder - manager will find an innovation ecosystem, a disruptive (r)evolution at the heart of innovation itself, complete from end to end, (1) developed exclusively from the user's point of view, and (2) based on logic - mathematics - numerically, without the guesswork, without uncertainties, with minimal risk. These two detailed changes in the S.I.T.®© - radical and (r)evolutionary - lead the specialist to recognize solutions that they themselves practice when they are consumers/users to spare/avoid their own efforts. These insanities exist because innovators use methodologies from the corporate point of view (opposite to item 1) and procedures based on subjectivity, assumptions that increase risks and uncertainties (opposite to item 2). We are on the wrong side and use the wrong methodologies that worsen the results. Under no circumstances should these failures be understood as a criticism but as a warning, attention, alarm, and correction of divergences and biases that arise during the project. Composing the scenario, it is especially important to repeat and emphasize that 97% of startups and 96% of corporate innovations will go bankrupt respectively according to CB Insights and Deloitte - Consulting studies. Innovation is considered the most difficult subject of administration. In this scenario, we can conclude that in the 21st century we still didn't "know how to innovate systematically". Concluding this summary, it is useful to point out that some flaws presented can be corrected immediately by the innovator, such is the simplicity required to correct some of them, achieving more efficiency in their results.
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Rui Santo (2026) studied this question.
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