2. Put your money where your mouth is. Promote people who champion your innovation efforts. Incentivize those who support the effort. Make innovation a key component of performance evaluations. If people aren't supporting the effort, make that a reason for possible termination. Create the time and physical space for people to gather and brainstorm ideas. Set key goals for the number of ideas to be generated and support the best ideas with funding.

3. Be prepared to coach people who are against the effort. Be ready to make organizational changes, if necessary. That means moving people out of the organization or down in the organization if you feel they threaten the effort. Watch out especially for the "not invented here" syndrome.

4. Remember the three Cs of effective communications: Clear, compelling, and convincing. Be very clear in communicating your expectations. Paint a compelling picture of what happens to the company if you don't innovate (bad things), and all the good things that will happen when the innovation efforts are successful. And be convincing when explaining why innovation is so important. You don't have to look very far to find examples of companies that failed to innovate. Just look at the case of Kodak. They knew that digital was on the way and print was on the way out. Kodak didn't fail because they didn't know how to innovate to meet that threat; they failed because they didn't want to. And you can use a great example of an old line company that innovated its way out of death's door. Encyclopedia Britannica also saw the digital revolution coming. But unlike Kodak, they chose to innovate by going entirely digital. Now Britannica's digital sales are better than their print sales ever were. And where are their print sales? Gone. And that's where the company would be if it hadn't innovated. You have to paint both sides of the "why are we doing this?" picture. I like to use what I call the El Dorado/El Chapo model. If we innovate, we are on the road to El Dorado, if we don't, we are on the road to El Chapo.

5. Hire or contract the resources needed to innovate. Remember, your own people won't know what they don't know. Fresh, new ideas from outside the organization will be needed.

6. Make the commitment to your people that they will be trained in the new innovations the organization chooses to adopt. Don't let them think your plan is "in with the new and out with the old;" otherwise they are sure to be against it.

7. Regularly review progress in the innovations efforts. This needs to be done by the CEO so the organization knows this is a serious effort. Stay very close to the effort so you will know when it starts to break down. And when it does (because it will from time to time), take action fast.

Always remember innovation never fails because of technology. It fails because of people who aren't convinced it is necessary. People who are threatened by it. People who long for yesterday instead of tomorrow. Follow these seven steps and ensure your company's innovations don't fall flat.