The music media manufacturer, for example, evaluated the potential of several concepts to provide access to a large number of songs, play without distortion, require minimal storage space and reproduce sound as if it were live - giving the firm insight into which concepts would create the most value. Organizations possessing this information can choose to pursue only those concepts that will create tremendous value and forego those that will deliver less than stellar results. Using these criteria, a company can, in effect, predict the success of the products it pursues by investing only in the most promising opportunities. As a result, firms have no way of predicting the success or failure of their proposed products and are forced to live with costly and wasteful product failure rates. This inability is tied to involvement in an old paradigm.
Innovation is no longer an art.
The ability to create value has become, and will continue to be, the primary source of sustainable competitive strength. Organizations possessing the ability to predict which products will succeed and which will fail in the marketplace are well positioned to win today's battle for intellectual leadership and tomorrow's battle for market dominance. Recognizing that a product's ultimate success or failure can be predicted is an important step on the road to mastering the process of innovation. New thinking is paramount to success in a marketplace where the old rules no longer apply. Copyright 1999 by Management Roundtable, Inc.