Gartner Insights Abstract

Combat Common Barriers to Scaling Innovation

Published: 29 January 2024

Summary

While many organizations have had formal innovation programs for several years, scaling proven ideas to fully commercialized or deployed solutions has been a constant challenge. Executive leaders should use the recommendations in this research to address the perennial barriers to scaling innovation.

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Overview

Key Findings
  • Strategy barriers to scaling innovation include lack of investment, misalignment of innovation goals with business objectives, and lack of program connectivity with upstream strategy and downstream execution.

  • Process barriers to scaling innovation include innovation process gaps, lack of customer centricity and ineffective metrics.

  • Cultural barriers to scaling innovation include risk aversion and internal politics, not invented here (NIH) syndrome, and lack of diversity in people and ideas.

Recommendations

To overcome organizational barriers to innovation, executive leaders should:

  • Overcome strategy barriers by taking a venture capital (VC) mindset toward investments; by aligning innovation goals with business objectives; and by connecting and coordinating strategy,

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Analysts:

Owen Chen Tsuneo Fujiwara

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