Why Experimentation Is a Crucial Part of Innovation

Experimentation Celebrates Creative Mindsets

Forbes describes corporate innovation as “having out-of-the-box thinking as a strategy within your business”. Experimentation actively encourages employees to embrace a creative mindset by always looking for the next big thing. While it is universally known that the majority of product innovation will fail, winning ideas cannot be found without a willingness to experiment. 

Therefore, a successful corporate innovation program should encourage company-wide innovation that engages all employees at every level. Implenia's innovative approach, led by their accessible innovation program powered by KICKBOX, exemplifies the transformative impact of experimentation in cultivating a team of intrapreneurs dedicated to ongoing idea generation. By embracing a culture of continuous brainstorming, Implenia empowers employees to contribute their insights and creativity to drive meaningful innovation within the company. Through the platform's collaborative framework, employees are empowered to explore new possibilities, pushing the boundaries of traditional thinking and fueling the company's growth and success.

Experimentation Allows Employees to Fail

In the realm of innovation, a creative mindset is undeniably crucial. However, the harsh reality of the innovation journey is that failures are often an integral part of the process. Even gaming company Rovio released 51 failed games before Angry Birds. The fear of failure often kills innovation, but a focus on experimentation allows employees to build a better relationship with failure. For starters, experiments allow innovators to identify issues by testing ideas out on a small scale, enabling them to gather valuable insights and make informed decisions moving forward.

It is a far better outcome than allowing large problems to surface later on due to a fear of failure. Moreover, the acceptance of failure empowers employees and enables them to keep working on new ideas even if previous ones didn’t go to plan. With tools like KICKBOX Intrapreneurship, autonomous innovation lets them establish whether their idea is a hit or a miss, early on in the process.

Experimentation Enables Employees to Learn

Ultimately, the main goal of experimentation is to learn. It enables employees or companies to gather more data so that they can make informed decisions about proposed innovations at every stage of the process. Innovation often revolves around customer-centric ideas and the insights into engagement and demand will confirm or deny the viability of an innovation. 

It is very easy for an innovative person to let their ideas run wild. Sadly, this can be very costly if their instincts are wrong. Conversely, experiments lead to data-driven decisions, and it is through data-driven decisions that the most successful companies of the future will be able to leverage emerging technologies and drive their innovation efforts at scale. Experimentation makes the process far smoother.