1. As you prepare to develop an innovation process model for your organization, you must first evaluate the firm’s risk tolerance. This is similar to a physician evaluating the risks associated with a recommended medical treatment for a specific patient diagnosis. Recommended treatments might vary based upon the patient’s risk factors .
How Smart Is Your Company or Project Team about Risk Taking?
To judge your organization’s propensity to take risks and learn from failure, reflect on the following questions:
• Does your organization encourage people to take risks in order to learn from them?
• Does your organization reward people for learning from failures? Or is punishment its default response?
• Can you name at least one successful innovation when your company celebrated learning from at least one failure to make the innovation ultimately work?
• Has your company built a higher-than-average discovery quotient in its people to ensure against the inherent risks of disruptive innovation?
• Do your company’s top managers understand that they need to take risks and fail frequently in order to innovate?
