Why this idea means business : We explore marketing innovation’s challenges and opportunities. Learn how to positively reframe the 3Fs of innovation. Read this to rethink your approach to failure, frustration and f*cking around.
Innovation has many challenges. The pressure to drive growth. Prickly project teams. Punishing approval processes. Consequently, many businesses fear creativity and kill ideas too early.
Yet, you need innovation to win customers and outperform competitors.
Fear is the big F-word behind most innovation barriers. However, it has 3 buddies. Failure. Frustration. And f*cking around. Or as we call them the 3Fs of innovation.
Innovation challenges your brain’s preference for routine and habit. These might make life easier. Less stressful. But innovation means pushing past this default thinking. Let’s explore how you do that.
The 3Fs of innovation - Failure
We’ll start with the most confronting of the bad 3Fs of innovation. Failure. No one sets out to fail, right? Yet despite the best intentions, most innovation ideas don’t even make it to market. Of those that do, around 40% fail.
Sounds high right? You wouldn’t want to explain in a performance review why you “failed” 40% of the time, would you? Failure is a word loaded with negative associations. From early in our lives, we’re taught to aim for success and to avoid failure. Especially when it can mean your job.
But this doesn’t work for innovation as it’s based on 3 false assumptions :-
- Failure is binary – it isn’t.
- Failure means not hitting 100% – it doesn’t.
- The business world sees failure as unacceptable – it shouldn’t.
Failure is binary - it isn’t
Failure in a business context is often treated as a binary concept. You hit your target, or you didn’t. You launched on time, or you didn’t. The customer bought your product, or they didn’t. But the reality is that most projects, particularly in innovation aren’t so black and white.
What if your target was based on a forecast made using incomplete information, and something you couldn’t possibly know meant you only hit 80% rather than 100%? Is that a failure if it still boosted your profit and loss?
What if the CEO decided to prioritise another product over your innovation which meant the operations team couldn’t deliver your new product until 3 months after the original plan? Does that make you a failure, when it’s something over which you had no control?
And what if the customer doesn’t need your product because there’s nothing wrong with their current product? But they do buy it in 6 months when they need a replacement because of all the advertising and PR you’ve done. Have you failed because they didn’t buy straight away, or succeeded because they did in 6 months time?
So, a key thing you can do to banish the stigma of failure in innovation is to reconsider how you define success. You want your objectives to stretch you (which is motivating) but not so much that they overstretch you (leading to anxiety and burnout). You can set more audacious “bonus” targets to motivate you further, but your base target for your innovation should be (with reasonable effort) achievable.
Failure means not hitting 100% - it doesn’t
Ideally, you want an innovation scale of success. It feels like this should go from 0% (fail) to 100% (success). However, this approach has problems.
First, a 0% score assumes you achieved nothing. But even if your product never launches, or launches and loses money, every innovation project always contributes something. Even if it’s only to learn what not to do next time.
A 100% score, on the other hand, assumes that there’s a “perfect” solution. One that can’t be bettered. Yet, this is almost impossible in any field.
For example, Roger Federer, 20-times tennis Grand Slam champion gave a graduation speech in 2024 where he shared that though he won 80% of his matches, he actually only won 54% of his points. So, a high “failure” rate in terms of points. But was he a failure? Of course, not. His success came from being good at winning when it mattered.
It should be the same in innovation. Define what matters. The numbers are part of it, but that’s short-term thinking. There are too many factors outside your control for every innovation to succeed. What really matters and what delivers long-term is improving the way you do innovation.
This should drive your definition of innovation success. It’s trying things out, capturing the learnings and applying them to do your next innovation better. Yes, you want your innovation to drive growth and profits. However, the best way to do that is to build an innovation learning system that improves itself over time.
The business world sees failure as unacceptable - it shouldn’t
The binary and 100% views of innovation are both driven by subjectivity. This is a poor basis for innovation. Objectivity is a much better approach.
The most innovative businesses see the process of innovation as a science. They test and build a portfolio of innovations from evolutionary advances on current products to bold (but carefully tested) more revolutionary innovations.
The key is to think more big picture and less about each individual innovation “experiment”.
Scientists see failures as how you learn what to try next to see what does work. Position each innovation as a future-test. A chance to explore potential improvements and breakthrough ideas. Rather than seeing something that doesn’t work as a failure, you see it as a way to learn what will work in the future.
The fact that some innovations won’t work is just part of the process. If nothing ever goes wrong, you never learn. Learning from your mistakes helps drive innovation success.
Logical Lou on innovation failure
Logical Lou, who speaks on behalf of our logical brain had this to say about failure :-
“Of course, this all makes perfect sense when you think about it logically. For some innovations to succeed, others must fail. And every successful innovation there has ever been usually comes at the end of a string of failures where the innovators learned how to make the product better. It’s the scientific way. It’s said that Edison took 10,000 attempts at making the light bulb before finally cracking it. But that innovation has clearly been a success, despite coming off the back of what some business leaders today would call a string of failures.”
The 3Fs of innovation - Frustration
As we said at the start, fear is the big F-word that usually blocks innovation.
But it most often manifests itself in business innovation as anger and its close cousin frustration.
Working in innovation is highly stressful and at times, makes you want to scream and tear your hair out.
But why is this? What makes innovation such an emotional experience?
Lack of regular dopamine rewards
This is partly due to the nature of innovation itself and how our brains react to it.
You do most things in life because you’re motivated to do them. That motivation is mostly driven by rewards in the form of dopamine releases in our brains. You get a pleasure hit back from the effort you put in.
However, this isn’t straightforward in innovation as you’re exploring the unknown. Testing ideas without knowing what will work.
“Not knowing” and getting things wrong feels frustrating as we put the effort in but get no dopamine reward back when something doesn’t work. Dopamine rewards only kick in when something works and we succeed.
One way around this is to change your mental reward system when working on innovation projects. Find a way to reward yourself for trying something (even if it fails). Reward yourself for learning something new and reducing the list of things you didn’t know. It doesn’t have to be a big reward. Grab a cup of tea and a biscuit. Go for a quick walk. Pat the dog. Just do something that puts a smile on your face. Instant frustration relief.
Leading innovation project teams - let them flow
Most innovation projects are run by project teams. Someone originates the idea, but they usually need technical expertise to make things happen. Operations to make products. Supply chain to deliver them. Customer service and HR to handle the people elements. IT to build your systems and finance to manage the budgets. And so on.
However, these functions usually have to split their focus between their “day job” and the innovation project. And that causes conflict.
Their day job is to make the current business run smoothly. Innovation comes along and distracts and disrupts that with its whole future focus. The conflict comes from trying to maintain things and change things at the same time. As we said earlier, our brains like routine and habit so the status quo usually wins this battle to the detriment of your innovation idea.
It’s a leadership team challenge to resolve this. They need to build a team of open-minded people who collectively understand and desire what innovation delivers. Who can work in a creative culture that encourages experimentation and who don’t fear the consequences when something doesn’t go to plan.
The key reframing here is for innovation teams to enjoy what they do. They should have what Hungarian-American psychologist, Mihaly Csikszentmihaly called flow. A sense of fun, enjoyment and desire that they’re pursuing something meaningful and desirable. You want to reward teams for experimenting and letting their more playful sides come out. That’s where the most creative ideas come from. Help teams nurture good ideas, not neuter them. Make innovation intriguing rather than infuriating.
Emotional Eddy on innovation frustration
Emotional Eddy, our emotional brain representative had this to say about innovation frustration :-
“Argh! Innovation drives me crazy sometimes. So many exciting opportunities. And yet so many killjoys. So much negativity. And moaning. And unwieldy processes and documentation. Why does it always take so long? Why does everyone need to agree on everything? Honestly, there’s nothing worse than slogging your way through an innovation to find that your competitor got there before you. Or that you missed your launch window with the retailer. There must be a better way to do it, surely?”.
The 3Fs of innovation - F*cking around
Our final negative innovation F is the tangible outcome of the sense of failure and frustration. On many innovation projects, you seem to spend endless time f*cking around.
Writing briefs. Compiling business cases. Getting approvals. Fraught meetings where nothing gets decided, and there are constant questions and unnecessary challenges.
It’s an environment that encourages idea killers and hurts creative people.
So, this is our biggest, but most challenging reframe. If your innovation process isn’t working, what’s the point of sticking to it? Sometimes you need to break the system to improve it. To get things done. Of course, this is easier said than done. It takes courage to challenge and change the rules. But if something’s clearly not working, you can sit and suffer or you can get off your ass and fix it.
Good creative leaders realise the need for constant improvement. They instinctively move on those who put up barriers and reward those who think creatively. They encourage speed, flexibility, and experimenting until the team gets it right. Good creative leaders build a culture where people don’t f*ck around but instead say f*ck it, let’s do what’s needed to make this idea happen. They don’t see the innovation process as gates and hurdles to prevent risk, but instead see it as a huge creative opportunity to grow the business.
So stop the f*cking around on innovation, say f*ck it and get it done.
Instinctive Izzy on innovation f*cking around
Instinctive Izzy, our instinctive brain representative had this to say :-
“Oh, I totally get this. Logical Lou has to hold me back all the time from shouting at people in innovation meetings. Why does the Finance Director have to approve everything when they’re never around most of the time? And the Operations Director’s always banging on about efficiency, when that’s totally not the point of innovation? And as for all those forms and PowerPoint slides, oh my god, what’s the point? Let’s just simplify this and get the job done.”
Conclusion - Reframing the 3Fs of innovation
Shaping your business’s future should be one of the most exciting things you ever get to do at work. Yet watch any innovation team meeting and it’s a constant barrage of negativity.
The “bad” 3Fs of innovation come out as you face failure, frustration and lots of f*cking around.
The key to fixing this is to figure out how to reframe those so everyone sees innovation more positively. Something they want to do, rather than feel forced to do. Positioning more positive ways to frame the opportunities helps.
For example, see innovation as a big science experiment. A way to future-test your business. Add more flow to the innovation team, so they see it as an opportunity to stretch their skills rather than their sanity. And when it all starts to get you down, stop f*cking around, say f*ck it, and just go get it done.
Check out our innovation challenges article for more on this. Or drop us a line if you need help to positively reframe your 3Fs of innovation.
Photo credits
Thumbs down : Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash
Angry face : Photo by Andre Hunter on Unsplash
Bored in front of computer : Photo by Magnet.me on Unsplash
Two people with macbooks and notepads : Photo by Scott Graham on Unsplash
Confetti : Photo by Pablo Heimplatz on Unsplash
Woman giving the finger : Photo by engin akyurt on Unsplash
Legal scales : Photo by Tingey Injury Law Firm on Unsplash
“Yes” in sand : Photo by Drahomír Posteby-Mach on Unsplash
Business meeting : Photo by Campaign Creators on Unsplash
