To bring an innovation successfully to the marketplace is a tedious job. It indicates whether a startup (or an existing venture) applied the right survival techniques and made an effective transition from idea to market adoption. Bestselling books on innovation focus, for instance, on improving internal management processes or on sharpening market strategy. The innovation failure rate ‒ where failure is defined as not realizing the pre-launch anticipated benefits ‒ is usually estimated at 80-90%. It is therefore not surprising that many a company's innovation manager relies on incremental innovations, such as introducing a new milkshake flavor or improving a bank's online webcare services, rather than risking his career with some highly unpredictable disruptive innovation. It takes guts, perseverance, and a deep understanding of the market to come up with successful disruptive innovative products or services. The focus of this chapter will be on the market and its consumers. In the end, they are the ones that must be willing to pay for whatever innovation enters the market. Innovation success depends on customer adoption, on the diffusion of the new product or service among consumers. A convincing customer strategy should be a top priority among startups. Having a technologically perfect product is simply not enough to enter the market, developing a persuasive marketing strategy is essential. Upstream (product creation) and downstream innovation (going-to-market), as we explained, should go hand in hand. Startups typically fail because they overlook the vital importance of combining smart upstream and effective downstream innovation.

An innovation, of course, starts with an idea. In Silicon Valley, this idea is preferably disruptive, by shaking the status quo as we discussed in more detail in the previous chapter. Is it difficult to come up with disruptive ideas? Apparently not, since there are many disruptive ideas launched by startups. There are so many ideas, you do not even have to worry yours will be stolen. We quote Eric Ries from his already classic book The Lean Startup: “Part of the special challenge of being a startup is the near impossibility of having your idea, company, or product being noticed by anyone, let alone a competitor. (…) [T]ake one of your ideas (…) find the name of the relevant product manager at an established company (…) and try to get that company to steal your idea.