“Fall down seven times, stand up on the eighth,” is a Japanese saying that failure is not fatal and it is the courage to continue that counts. Innovation is a risky process. It consumes time, money and human resources. There is no risk free ways of innovation. We must consider the risk of innovating and not innovating.
But how much risk do you really want to take? If the success rate of innovation is stated as achieving 1 successful idea out of 3,000 raw ideas, would you attempt to innovate? In the entertainment industry, it has stated that to achieve a block buster movie, it is usually conceived from more than 1,000 ideas.
Industrial Revolution 4.0, Artificial Intelligence and Internet of Things are new technology moments indicating continuous advancement of technology. Interestingly, in every technological disruption, it provides great opportunity to change the world, affect the way people live and offer interesting business opportunities.
Did your organization benefit from the shift in technology during the last few technological moments such as the Industrial Revolution 3.0, Computing & Communication convergence and Internet shift? Or you experienced set-back during the transition?
Have you stepped back to look forward and be ready for the next wave of technological disruption? How much innovation should you invest to reap the rewards and what risk are you taking along the way?
Innovate or Perish
Innovate or perish, is this the only choice that we have based on the New Darwinian theory? We are faced with a challenging situation where if we push to reinvent through innovation, there is a promise of success but it is high risk to be the first movers.
On the contrary, the risk is not lower but higher if we do not push for reinvention. There is no doubt that we have to push forth and endorse the importance of innovation and dream about its promises but how much risk can one afford or attempt.
Very little effort is focused on calculating the risk. By spending more time in understanding the risk factors, strategic decisions can be made with solid and proper considerations. Interestingly, most calculation of risks are financially based and many business and technological criteria that are needed to be considered were overlooked.
Educate our way
There are major efforts to generate the awareness and needs of innovation but very little attention is given to risk management. By focusing on learning both innovation and risk management, we will improve our chance of successes.
With limited resources, we must accelerate the transition from a trial and error approach to a more systematic and structured way. Society of Certified Risk Professionals (SCRP) Malaysia was mooted to provide holistic approach to calculate risks, derive better innovation strategies and set a standard understanding.
In achieving one success, Thomas Edison discovered 10,000 ways how things did not work. We do not have as much resource as Edison had to repeat his learning process. We need to embrace better innovation, problem solving and risk management methods to do it better, faster, cheaper and safer.