Conviction Matters More Than Courage in Breakthrough Innovation
“It’s like going to a casino where you don’t know the rules or the payout. You’re not going to place a big bet there.”
– Director of Engineering
Most people think innovation takes courage. And yet, I have found that the leaders who move boldly on high-stakes innovation projects aren’t fearless — they’re confident.
Confident because they know something that others don’t. They have conviction because they know where the market is under-served and how to address it.
This insight — that conviction infuses courage to drive successful innovation — emerged when I interviewed 12 senior executives across industries who shared responsibility for driving growth and innovation.
Despite differences in company size, sector, and business model, they described strikingly similar challenges that all trace back to a single root cause: the absence of conviction that only comes from a deep understanding of the target customer’s unmet needs.
The Five Innovation Challenges: All Roads Lead to Conviction
After analyzing these executive interviews through the lens of Jobs-to-Be-Done thinking, we uncovered five interconnected challenges that conventional innovation methods often overlook:
1. Innovation Efforts Often Lack a Reliable Path to Differentiated Value
Across industries, executives made clear that innovation is not the end goal — it’s a means to create competitive advantage. But many organizations lack a reliable process for translating innovation efforts into clear, differentiated value.
“Innovation is a means to differentiation and competitive advantage, but it’s really the differentiation and competitive advantage we want.”
– SVP, IT Services
The Conviction Connection: When leaders have clarity about their target customers’ unmet needs — their customers’ end in mind — it becomes much easier to chart a reliable path to differentiation. Innovation efforts shift from chasing trends or internal hunches to targeting specific, validated market opportunities.
2. The Real Barrier: Misunderstanding Customer Needs
Most leaders acknowledged that customer understanding remains partial or assumption-based, especially in complex B2B environments. Even companies that value customer insight often struggle to determine which needs truly matter.
“We’re chasing ideas… a lot of balls in the air. That means everything goes slower than it would if we had more focus.”
– Healthcare Executive
The Conviction Connection: Understanding customer needs is where conviction is born. Systematically understanding their needs — their importance and level of satisfaction — creates the foundational knowledge that builds strong conviction about where to focus, and makes generating good ideas very natural.
3. Innovation Is Risky When It’s Not Grounded in Clear Market Opportunity
Executives aren’t opposed to bold moves — but they rightfully hesitate when new initiatives are based on guesswork rather than insight.
“The fear of failing or investing in the wrong thing… these unknowns can paralyze you.”
– SVP, IT Services
The Conviction Connection: Conviction eliminates this paralyzing fear by transforming uncertainty into calculated opportunity. When leaders know precisely which customer needs matter most and remain unsatisfied, the risk of innovation dramatically decreases.
4. Internal Gridlock Often Stalls Progress
Several executives described how the absence of objective, external criteria for decision-making leads to internal debates and prioritization struggles.
“If nothing is important, then everything becomes important.”
– Director of Business Ops
The Conviction Connection: Conviction creates organizational alignment. When leaders have clear, customer-based evidence about where to focus, they cut through opinion-based gridlock with objective priorities that unify teams and accelerate progress.
5. Innovation Efforts Are Starved by Operational Urgency
Across industries, leaders shared how their best minds are consumed by daily execution — leaving little room to explore opportunities to create unique value.
“Our best and brightest are delivering to current clients — not exploring new opportunities.”
– Director of Business Ops
The Conviction Connection: Conviction creates the courage to reallocate resources despite operational pressures. When leaders know with certainty where the biggest market opportunities lie, they find ways to protect innovation resources even when daily demands seem overwhelming.
Building Conviction Through Customer Understanding
The most powerful way to build conviction is by systematically understanding your target customers’ (or segments’) needs — identifying where their important needs remain unsatisfied. These are you opportunities for differentiation and growth.
When teams can determine which customer needs are important but not getting done to their satisfaction with their current product or service solution(s), teams can:
– Align around objective priorities
– Focus creativity on what matters most
– Consistently generate good ideas
– Make confident decisions
– Justify resource allocation despite competing demands
No leader wants to place big bets without first validating market demand. With clear insight, innovation becomes a high-return investment rooted in real opportunity, not hope.
From Insight to Action
Today, it’s possible to identify and rank customer needs in virtually any market — then evaluate and select those opportunities that are most attractive for your firm to pursue. This enables teams to generate only “good” ideas through focused idea generation.
That’s because Jobs-to-Be-Done (JTBD) reveals the relevant market and company insights needed before ideation so the team can bake it into their ideas, thereby consistently achieving a high degree of market fit at concept creation. Not surprisingly, this dramatically increases success rates, quickens time to market, and gives firms a reliable way to drive innovation and growth with a repeatable business process.
The executives I interviewed didn’t need to generate more ideas, iterate faster, or increase their courage to take big risks. They needed a reliable way to identify and rank their target customers’ unmet needs. A way to innovate with conviction.
Next Steps for Customer-Driven Innovation
If you can relate to these five challenges, you’ll likely appreciate the approach we’ve developed to address them: Lean JTBD OS™ — A simple, reliable process to identify and capitalize on market opportunities.
To receive early access to the Lean JTBD OS™ Guide (currently in development), email me at [email protected] with the subject line “Lean JTBD OS™ Guide” or sign up for priority access here: https://revealgrowth.com/priorityaccess/.
Book a discovery call here.
