Advancing Innovation

Final Thoughts

You miss 100% of the shots you never take.

—Wayne Gretzky

As we come to an end on this innovation discussion, I hope this journey has enlightened you and given you some guidance that you can immediately apply to your organization. I hope the research conducted by IMA and included in this book provides relevant insights about the call to action and highlights how we all need to be engaged in supporting and driving innovation value in our respective organizations. Our markets and customers are morphing quickly and constantly, and we need to adapt our value propositions in how we deliver value to our customers. We each need to create our own, custom Innovation Elixir to drive and realize innovation value. I’d like to address these final thoughts in two categories: Stories of Lessons Learned and Critical Takeaways for Advancing Innovation.

STORIES OF LESSONS LEARNED

I have failed at about as many things as I’ve succeeded at in my career. That is why I’ve had some success—because I dared to fail. I can’t say it was always fun, but, in retrospect, it was usually worth it. I remember reading a Russian expression once, which says: “The wise man learns from someone else’s mistakes, the smart man learns from his own, and the stupid one never learns.” It’s smart to learn from your own mistakes, but it’s wise to learn from other’s mistakes so that you don’t have to make as many in the first place.

As you are leading, mentoring, and teaching others to drive innovation ...