Top 5 Innovation Killers - #1

#1: An intolerance of failure. The #1 top tactic for innovation, according to expert innovators, is to ‘experiment fearlessly’. Nothing works first time, so you may as well get it wrong as soon as you can. If you cannot accept failure you are unlikely to see too much innovation, no matter how much money you throw at it.

General Mills Analysis -- simply put, we are not currently set up to 'experiment fearlessly'. We don't have a mindset nor a structure that supports true incubation. Furthermore, when truly transformational opportunities are pursued within our operating division construct, they are somewhat doomed the start, as they are held to the standards of the Division New Product launch hurdles, which have been developed based upon the categories in which we ALREADY compete. As a result, the chances of emerging opportunities (which often have lower volumes and potentially lower margins at first) meeting these hurdles are very slim. We definitely have pockets of disruptive thinking in the organization.....now is the time to put it all together and create the structure and processes required to truly incubate ideas that will ultimately either go away or achieve enough scale to be incorporated into the broader matrix.