Innovate on Purpose: Innovation FOMO and FOMAD

Innovation teams often suffer from FOMAD, the fear of making a decision, when they lack information or context about corporate direction, strategy, funding mechanisms, or risk tolerance. This leads to delays in decision-making and hinders innovation success. FOMAD can be addressed by better scope definition, executive support, and clear expectation setting. Scarcity of resources also creates FOMAD, making innovation more of a gambling activity than an insightful, practiced activity. Innovation teams should invest in good ideas and eliminate or reduce FOMAD by creating clarity, funding, and good scope for innovation activities, having reasonable expectations, and treating failure as a learning exercise.