In a world of endless possibilities and ever-advancing technologies, the fail-fast philosophy has become the preferred approach for innovating, developing ideas, and launching products. Some may even say that failure is the essence of exponential innovation and many Silicon Valley business gurus embrace failure as a necessary learning experience. And it is not only early-stage startups that make occasional mistakes with their decision to launch new products – big international companies also have their corporate innovation failures. From Nike’s short-lived FuelBand, through Facebook Phone, and Google Glass, failed products and abandoned tech projects are not rare even in the most successful global companies. The reality is that founders pivot more often that we hear of.
Over the time founders and investors from the SEE region have earned themselves the reputation of being somewhat risk-averse. But this is now changing. With ever-increasing efforts in research and development, regional startups are constantly testing, validating and launching new products. And even though as consumers and end-users, we see the final result of the innovation process, there are many ideas and projects that “die” before reaching the market. The reason being simple: sometimes founders and product managers realise that in order to survive or scale they need to rethink whether the efforts they put into a specific product outweigh the gains they earn from this specific product.
Our team is asking SEE founders and product managers to give some examples of products that either failed post-launch, or were abandoned prematurely so that the company can pivot and focus on something else to grow. If you have such projects in your product roadmaps that you are willing to share about, please fill out this short survey by the 20th August.
