One of our clients once proudly launched a ginger-flavoured portfolio extension. I will not mention the category or country for confidentiality reasons, but the lesson itself is universal. When we asked why they decided to launch it, the answer came immediately:

“Because it tastes great. People like it.”

Fair enough. Ginger can be a fantastic taste. But then came the more important question: Where did this insight come from?

The answer?

“I was drinking a ginger-flavoured beverage on the beach during vacation and thought it was amazing.”

And this is where many innovation projects quietly begin to fail. Not because the product is bad. Not because the team is incompetent. Not because consumers are wrong. But because leadership mistakes a personal moment for a scalable market opportunity.

A beach is not market research. A vacation moment is not a distribution strategy. And personal taste is not demand-space validation.

We challenged the idea carefully. Not to kill innovation, but to strengthen it. We suggested validating a few fundamentals first: What data does the flavour house have about this profile in the specific category? Is the flavour already succeeding elsewhere? Is it niche or mainstream? What level of repeat purchase exists? What would retailers realistically delist to make shelf space available? Would this strengthen the core portfolio or fragment it?

The response?

We were labelled bureaucratic. Too process-driven. Too cautious. Not “creative enough.”

So eventually we stepped back. The launch moved ahead. And to be fair to the team, they did a very good job operationally. The taste was genuinely good.

But the market reality was brutal. The flavour turned out to be highly niche. Volumes remained weak. Distribution became a constant struggle. Retailers had little appetite to support it.

And then came the real damage.

To create shelf space for the launch, some of the company’s best-selling SKUs were temporarily reduced or replaced.

The outcome?

• Lost sales on core products
• Weak rotation on the new launch
• Wasted production and marketing resources
• Internal frustration and blame
• Reduced retailer confidence
• Another failed launch added to the company’s history

And this is the part many leadership teams still underestimate:

Most innovation failures do not fail in R&D. They fail long before that.

They fail because companies confuse creativity with innovation. Real innovation is not random inspiration. Real innovation is disciplined curiosity supported by process, validation, commercial logic, distribution thinking, and execution rigor.

Because in FMCG and retail, innovation is not simply about creating something new. It is about creating something that deserves space: in consumers’ minds, on shelves, inside retailer economics, and within operational reality.

Too many organizations innovate as if shelf space is infinite. It is not.

Every new SKU enters a battlefield. Something always pays the price: complexity, working capital, attention, focus, or distribution efficiency.

And the most dangerous part?

Teams often celebrate the launch itself instead of questioning whether the launch should exist in the first place.

Creativity absolutely matters. But without discipline, process, and market reality, creativity becomes expensive entertainment.

The companies that consistently win with innovation are usually not the most creative. They are the most disciplined.

Because innovation is not an art project.

It is a commercial capability.

Most companies don’t fail because they lack ambition. They fail because they misunderstand the real problem.