Low-risk, incremental improvements aren’t innovation, but that’s where most companies focus, Accenture finds.

Innovation is thrilling when it actually happens in a business, but all too often it is the emptiest of buzzwords.

Last fall, our annual InformationWeek 500 rankings highlighted IT innovators just like the Gap, UPS, Dish, and residential Depot which have turned great ideas into action using cloud services, data analytics, collaboration tools, and/or mobile apps. It’s no small feat. But these are the exceptions.

What’s much more likely is an uninspiring parade of low-risk, incremental improvements. That is the rather dreary conclusion of an Accenture study of greater than 500 executives from companies with greater than $100 million of annual revenue.

[An inflexible IT strategy could break what you are promoting. Read: IT’s Famous Last Words: If It Ain’t Broke, Don’t Fix It.]

If an organization invests in a disruptive product or business model and the returns are disappointing, the pursuit of “a higher big thing” dries up fast, and so do expectations and funding, the study found. Fool me once and… innovation is replaced by renovation.

Seventy percent of the respondents called innovation a top five priority, and 67% said they depend strongly on innovation for long-term success. However, greater than half said their company has a sluggish innovation process. Only 34% agreed that their “organization has a well-defined innovation strategy,” and 21% agreed that they “have a pretty good process for capturing ideas outside the corporate.”

What’s preventing companies from crossing the innovation threshold that Netflix, Amazon, and Apple appear to leap past each year? The study blamed two main factors:

• Dependence on a conservative, incremental approach that fails to generate revenue
• The tendency to invent a product and never bring it to market swiftly or help it grow

After invention, companies still ought to craft the business model, customer experience, and “ecosystem that helps expand the market.”

Innovation breakdowns often get blamed on IT, marketing, and the C-suite being out of sync. Yet the 2013 InformationWeek Global CIO survey of IT executives downplayed that explanation. Respondents listed thin budgets and weak skill sets as innovation obstacles greater than CEO resistance. Only 14% chose “CEO or senior executives discourage innovation” as a barrier, and only 18% picked “poor relationships with other business units.”

Nevertheless, solid relationships can soften unless business units communicate consistently. And innovation is all but impossible without clear goals. In accordance with the Accenture study, your best chance to confront innovation inertia while protecting yourself from risk is to visit senior management with a proper and systematic plan that emphasizes speed, present a well-defined business model that supports an ongoing revenue stream, and identify early at the risks (and rewards) of disrupting a market.

Accenture’s survey results vouch for this systematic approach. Respondents from organizations that use a proper system for innovation reported better outcomes and satisfaction. Fifty percent of businesses with a proper innovation plan “intend to remodel their business within the next 3-5 years primarily with innovations.” Only 25% of businesses with a casual plan had such intentions.

In a up to date column on LinkedIn, the innovation consultant and author Gijs van Wulfen echoed the necessity for an exact methodology to assist “structure the chaotic start of innovation” in order that the “results on the end of the innovation pipeline will improve.” He outlined his 5-step FORTH solution to tackle innovation. Listed below are some key points:

• Ask your senior management beforehand what sort of innovations they expect: evolutionary improvements or revolutionary, new-to-the-world ideas? Deliver them.
• Make clear “what’s in it for us”. Present your innovative ideas with a concrete business case showing estimates of sales and profit potential.
• Make the feasibility clear. Will we make it? What’s going to it cost?
• Make it clear that there is a market on the market. Small-scale experiments are perfect tips on how to prove there is a potential market.

These are all good guidelines to get an innovation project going, but most IT and marketing teams will hit the concern-of-failure wall with senior management. Disrupting a market usually means disrupting reliable revenue streams. And that is the reason a scary proposition for a CEO. a primary example of this fear unraveling an organization was Kodak choosing to not invest heavily in disruptive digital cameras to offer protection to its (dying) film camera sales.

CEOs will continue to pay lip service to innovation, but it’s as much as small innovation teams to knock on C-suite doors, present a proper plan, and convince senior managers to assist throw down internal barriers to innovation.

If your company’s leaders remain unaware of the digital disruption that’s reshaping our economy and culture, your employees will smell a rat. They’ll leave. And a nimble digital force inevitably will blindside your organization. Just ask Borders, Blockbuster, and all of the taxi companies that never saw Uber and Hailo coming.

Shane O’Neill is managing editor for InformationWeek.

Too many companies treat digital and mobile strategies as pet projects. Listed below are four ideas to shake up your organization. Also within the Digital Disruption issue of InformationWeek: Six enduring truths about selecting enterprise software (free registration required).

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