Innovation Series #4: Failure to Innovate
What’s stopping you from innovation. Nothing we can think of except the usual sloth, fear and idiotic board or CEO. Perhaps you can enlighten us. What reasons do you give for failure to innovate? Here’s Tom’s take in his 2012 post Nonprofit Failure is Too Rare.
The Editors
By Tom Belford | December 6, 2012
The past two days, Roger has written (here and here ) on innovative ways to test direct mail acquisition packages.
He’s also written recently (here and here to include tools for smaller organizations.
But how willing, really, are nonprofits to innovate?
Here’s Seth Godin’s take on that subject —Non-profits have a charter to be innovators .
He poses two mindsets:
“We’re doing important work. Our funders count on us to be reasonable and cautious and proven, because the work we’re doing is too important to risk failure.”
Versus …
“We’re doing important work. Our funders count on us to be daring and bold and brave, because the work we’re doing is too important to play it safe.”
Godin urges: “Go fail. And then fail again. Non-profit failure is too rare, which means that non-profit innovation is too rare as well.”
His post focuses on innovation on the program side of nonprofits’ work. But the same applies to the marketing/fundraising side … doesn’t it?
Tom
One response to “Innovation Series #4: Failure to Innovate”
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In a different context, but I had a boss years ago who told us if we weren’t failing, we weren’t trying hard enough.
So long as you’re learning, failing is good – if not always fun.