Commercial innovation can be likened to walking along a tightrope. There’s a fine line between adopting gimmicky fads that have a finite shelf life and implementing a technique, process, or ingredient that’s too ahead of its time. A happy medium between the two — in which a company satisfies current trends through ground-breaking methods— is not easily found. Unfortunately, just like a tightrope, failure to achieve that equilibrium can have devastating consequences, yet to not try at all has just as disastrous economic effects. In an effort to avoid being left behind by other more successful innovators, you should explore…