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overdrawn because more was transferred than you realized.
    Finally, our sixth perspective makes the credible, if obvious, claim that to be successful, an innovation must actually exist in the world and that it must function in an intended and desirable way. In other words, a fundamental requirement of innovation is that we satisfy a particular set of technological innovation constraints . Here the bank must, for instance, be able to unequivocally identify members and nonmembers of the program in order to determine relevant fund transfer amounts. It must also be able to execute the funds transfers without errors and not, for example, transfer funds from an overdrawn account.
    The Venn diagram in Figure 1.2 is a visual depiction of the overlapping requirements of the six constraints. Each constraint is represented by an oval with the area inside the oval representing when the condition is being met. Areas of overlap between any two or more ovals represent the conditions under which multiple constraints are met. My proposition here is that any real, proposed, or even hypothetical innovation will have to satisfy all of the constraints presented by the context of that innovation. A quick trip to the Bank of America Web site proves that it was successful in meeting all six of the constraints.
    Figure 1.2
    Diagnosing Innovation Failures
    By making the conditions of success clearer and more specific, the framework of six types of constraints can also illuminate the reasons why a particular innovation has failed. To see how, let’s return to three of the brief examples I presented at the beginning of this chapter. In the case of the consumer products company with the breakthrough product that failed to move into production, industry constraints were apparent in the form of this organization’s role within its industry as a “fast-follower” organization that waits for others to prove a market first; this made the company uncomfortable with competing on the basis of product innovation versus relying on its customary advantage of efficiency. The mention of “financial pressures” suggests that organizational constraints took the form of insufficient resources to fund the new project. Organizational innovation constraints are also apparent in the company’s structure; it maintained its ability to manufacture its derivative products efficiently by sacrificing that part of the organization that focused on new products that were still in development and that were not currently producing revenue.
    In the case of the part-time inventor, although he was able to come up with a promising idea, thus overcoming the individual constraints, he succumbed to group constraints in the form of a potential collaborator who ridiculed and dismissed his ideas. Rather than face the possibility of being embarrassed again, he decided to drop the project. It is also possible that the expert would have been vindicated if in fact the state of electronics at the time meant that technological constraints would have prevented the inventor from turning his idea into a viable product.
    The arts organization appears to suffer from a combination of organizational and societal constraints. It has tied up immense resources in a building that has high value but comes with an even higher cost. Although the space is nice, the requirements of maintaining it create significant financial pressure on the organization. As a result, it finds itself forced to cater more than ever to the tastes and social values of potential audiences who are unwilling to pay to watch art being made when they just want to be entertained.
    Identifying the “Showstopper” Constraint(s)
    This framework of innovation constraints helps us understand more specifically why an attempt to innovate fails: it runs afoul of one or more of the six main types of constraints. But as you may have already started to see from the examples just discussed, in any given case the