Innovation experts tell us that failure is part of the innovation process. But companies with fewer innovation failures succeed more often because they have developed the culture, the resources and the processes to limit their risks. Here are eight strategies that your company can use to emulate their success.

1. Don’t try to be first.

“From my experience, entrepreneurs can dramatically reduce the risk of failure by focusing on execution rather than on reinventing the wheel,” said Christine Mendel, a business success coach. “Don’t be the first — be the second and do it differently or better.”

She points out that Facebook wasn’t the first social network; MySpace existed previously, but the founders of Facebook figured out how to improve upon it. Then there was Yahoo, the most widely used search engine in the Internet’s early days. Google eventually knocked Yahoo out of the top spot because it developed an algorithm that delivered better results.

2. Open your eyes to new possibilities.

Limiting innovation risk often involves looking beyond the obvious and thinking about all aspects of your organization to find the areas where you can make the most beneficial breakthroughs.

“You need to think not just about the product or service that you’re trying to deliver but also about how you can bring that product or service to market. What are the different ways that you can configure your assets in your organization to capitalize on those products and services?” said Andrew Marshall, founder of Primed Associates, a business that helps companies improve innovation ROI.

He cited the case of Steve Job’s return to Apple in 1997. It wasn’t the new product — the blue, all-in-one iMac computer — that made Apple successful. It was the innovation involved in streamlining its production down to a very few products and services so there was a high degree of efficiency in bringing products to market.

3. Know your customer like your best friend.

Companies that don’t have a clear understanding of what their customers really want are more likely to fail at innovation.

“You need to be obsessively mining information about your customers,” said Kirsten Osolind, president of re:invention, an innovation consulting firm. “You can use market intelligence to conduct planning, test services, develop customer loyalty programs, and increase efficiency. You can use things like crowd-managed guest Wi-Fi to collect information on customer needs. Delighting customers and then giving them what they don’t yet know that they need is one of the most important parts of being everyday inventive and re-inventive as a company.”

4. Build an idea pipeline.

To limit innovation risk, it’s important to create processes that not only encourage new ideas but also monitor their viability over time.

Iqbal Ashraf, founder of Mentors Guild, worked with an accounting firm that needed to drive sales and increase margins. The firm introduced an idea pipeline, and every employee was encouraged to write down ideas on how they could achieve those goals. “Every week they would have a meeting to discuss those ideas, but nobody was allowed to criticize,” Ashraf said.

The company moved forward with a few suggestions, including the introduction of an employee referral program and the embossing of the firm’s name on checks it sent out for its clients. In just three months, the sales pipeline had gone up by 25 percent.

“Having a funnel of ideas and a process where they are discussed constantly is important,” Ashraf said. “Otherwise, that funnel of ideas will lie somewhere underutilized.”

“Place lots of little bets,” said Osolind. “If you have a couple of different ideas going, track them, or summarize progress and advance what adds value. Table or discard the rest.” That way you won’t put all your resources into one idea too early.

5. Start small and ask questions.

Innovating on too grand a scale is risky.

“Stick to what you know, and play to your strengths,” said Michael Flanigan, co-founder of Covello, which works with other companies on innovative projects. “A lot of people try to build Rome in a day instead of starting with something small and getting that down.”

His firm is currently partnering with AT&T on a software startup. “They have a minimal budget, and they want to get some prototypes completed so they can iterate quickly. We’re building a lot of stuff fast and getting feedback on it so they’re not wasting money and time.”

Expect to make changes. “When people innovate, they tend to want everything to be perfect,” Flanigan said. “It’s like planning a perfect day; there’s always going to be some hitch that comes into it. It’s more important to build it, get it out there and get feedback, see how people use it and then fix it according to what they say.”

Julie Austin, entrepreneur and inventor of swiggies, didn’t get that feedback as she was developing packaging for her wrist water bottles. Her product ended up on the bottom shelves in stores because it couldn’t be displayed easily.

“What I should have done is consult with buyers before doing the final packaging and conducted a small market research test with a good cross-section of customers to get their opinion,” Austin said. “It was a costly innovation mistake.

“Sometimes you don’t really know what customers will think or how your product or service will be used until you actually get out and start experimenting. Think of it as version 1.0. Just don’t invest a lot of money in it until you get it right.”

6. Let your ideas germinate.

Companies that rush innovation — or discard ideas too quickly — are more likely to fail at it.

“Many people think that innovations are straight-out-of-the-gate successful,” Marshall said. “That is not the case. It was an eight- to 12-year progress before 3M’s Post-It^® notes became a reality.” Organizations need to give ideas time to germinate and generate their value over time.

7. Make friends.

To limit innovation risk, ask for help from someone who has a proven record of success.

Mendel is working with SkyClutter, a new social media platform for teens. SkyClutter founder Benedict Beason has sought advice from other innovators, including Jonathan Abrams, founder of Friendster. “To reach out to successful entrepreneurs every step of the way prior to launching any testing can mold the company and help them avoid mistakes that can easily happen when they are trying to do something different,” Mendel said.

8. You’re going to mess up. Learn from it.

The companies most successful with innovation know how to reframe their failures.

“If you are trying to create a breakthrough innovation, you will not be successful at times,” Marshall said. “What you have to do is make the failures early and small. If you fail and fail in a small-enough way, you can take that as a learning opportunity, and it doesn’t completely destroy your top- and bottom-line performance.”

Failures can become a positive when a company learns something more quickly than their competitors and can apply that learning to the next choice they make on where to innovate, limiting their innovation risks over the long term.

Employees — especially those on the front line — are an excellent resource when it comes to understanding customers, she added. A diverse workforce will bring valuable perspectives from many different points of view.