Recently, a reporter writing an article for The New York Times asked me what it takes to create innovative Web sites and applications. The question was, “is it all about the eureka moment?” Sure, most people would like the answer to be “yes”. Business would be a helluva lot easier if a simple aha sprouted a great product or solution to a problem. The bad news is that innovation is far more painful. The good news is that most people, and maybe your competitors, avoid pain. For us, it comes down to a discipline of experimentation and hard work that few seem willing to endure. Over the years, we’ve gone into many companies to help them break “out of the box”, providing them with the expertise and methodology to take their designs to the next level. We experimented and innovated our own innovation methodologies, and continue perfecting them every day. We’ve seen more than our share of how companies operate since we’ve been consulting on design and research for a while. For example, here are two common syndromes: Many companies champion their Web designers, giving them something of a blank check to do what they feel is right; In other organizations, overbearing executives dominate instead of learning and listening to customers. These innovation-killing syndromes we see recurring over and over. In Janet Rae-Dupry’s article Eureka! It Really Takes Years of Hard Work in today’s New York Times, check out what innovation experts think is required to make potentially good ideas become great in reality.