Why Your Company's Next Big Idea Will Probably Fail

Bucharest Tech Week
2 days ago
2 min read

Here's the brutal truth: Your company is probably sitting on game-changing ideas right now, but they're trapped in a system designed for yesterday's challenges. The disconnect isn't just costly, it's existential. And the clock is ticking faster than you think.

The Innovation Mirage

While 84% of executives believe innovation is essential to their organization's success, most companies are failing spectacularly at execution. Deloitte (2021) research reveals that only half of all innovation efforts are achieving their desired value targets - and that's among companies already investing in innovation programs.

Traditional innovation follows a predictable path: incremental improvements that look safe on spreadsheets but rarely create breakthrough value.

The Measurement Trap

Most companies invest in innovation but measure it like operations. They apply quarterly KPIs to decade-long transformations, expecting predictable returns from inherently unpredictable processes.

The result? Organizations get trapped in what Upen Barve, Chief Fusionist and Futuring Expert, calls the "gravity of the first horizon”, operational improvements that feel productive but struggle to generate transformative impact.

"Never in human history has the present been so temporary. Everything that happened in the last hundred years will happen in the next ten years."

The misalignment between how we measure and how innovation really happens creates blind spots not just in results, but in resource allocation.

The Portfolio Approach: Managing Innovation Like Investment

The problem isn't lack of ideas. It's treating them like a single-lane pipeline instead of a diversified portfolio. In his slingshot model presented at Innovation Summit 2025, Barve argues that smart companies allocate innovation resources across three distinct categories:

Ready to scale (continuous innovation), ready to co-create (adjacent opportunities), and ready to inspire (visionary bets). The challenge? Most organizations focus heavily on the first category while neglecting the portfolio balance needed for breakthrough innovation.

He also shared a case study from the mid-80s, where a team envisioned “putting a computer inside a book with a magic radio link.” The key wasn't the perfect forecast; it was the commitment to work simultaneously across all innovation horizons.

From Prediction to Preparation

Here's where most strategic planning breaks down: 40% of CEOs don't believe their company will survive the next decade on their current trajectory (PwC, 2023). Yet they keep using the same forecasting tools that got them into trouble.

Instead of predicting which future will happen, you need to build capacity to thrive in multiple scenarios. Start prototyping possibilities, test assumptions early, and “make imagination a business activity."

The question isn't whether disruption is coming. It's whether you'll be the one driving it.

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