Pursuing customer value innovation means that organizations and individuals must acquire the skills and competencies to do things differently. Corporations must shed behaviors and attitudes that handicap their actions, such as risk aversion, inward egocentricity, lack of cross-functional diversity and integration, hierarchical and stratified approval processes, and layers of decision making. The elements of corporate and organizational behavior that foster innovation and the creation of a VIP portfolio are the antithesis of these handicapping behaviors and attitudes.

A new product or direction, like a new venture, is uncertain; the outcome is unknown. Like an entrepreneur a person who organizes, operates, and assumes the risk for a business venture ^[13] an executive who seeks to foster innovation must be comfortable with ambiguity. Senior executives must be comfortable living with the uncertainty inherent in defining the customer space. While they must spend time and resources to acquire information by gathering and validating customer data, they must be willing to act on partial data until more is validated. Sometimes they have to be comfortable with being wrong. Further, they must be willing to admit mistakes while moving the organization along an alternate path. Tweaking decisions as new evidence becomes available is the rule, not the exception. Senior managers who accept failure, and then push past it, increase the chances for success. They must develop leaders who are willing to do the same, no matter their discipline, level in the organization, or assigned role.

These individuals business entrepreneurs are found in all types...