Killing Innovation Ideas and Projects

By Dennis Kennedy on June 10, 2021

Posted in Innovation, Legal Innovation, Musings

I decided last weekend that it was time to kill off some of my innovation ideas and projects, both personal and professional.

And my timing might have been right because yesterday I watched a great Strategyzer webinar called “Why Killing Ideas is Key in Innovation,” featuring Alex Osterwalder, Tendayi Viki, and Uwe Kirscner. A replay is available here.

From the webinar description: “Here’s how world class innovators, we call them Invincible Companies, find the winners. They invest small amounts of resources in a large number of teams to test and adapt their ideas. They then kill at least half of those projects after a short amount of time. Only a few ideas and teams that can produce evidence get follow-up investments. They repeat this elimination process until the best ideas and teams emerge.

The key to the above is threefold. Firstly, eliminate the blockers to innovation and let any team with an idea start. Secondly, hone your ability to kill ideas that don’t produce evidence after a short amount of time. Thirdly, make every team feel like a winner, so that they come back to test new ideas.”

It was nice to get some confirmation of the approach I had taken over the weekend.

In my own case, I used the two principles of killing at least half of the projects and honing my ability to look at actual evidence to kill projects that don’t produce evidence in a reasonably short period of time.

Some decisions were easy, but some were quite difficult. Key insight: people telling me that something is “a great idea” is not evidence.

I feel like I’m starting to develop skills in identifying blockers. And I’m adopting and building reps in the approaches I teach in my classes and in the Exponential.Legal Launch Lifecycle technology, especially in taking an evidence-based approach to validation and de-risking.

Key insight: people telling me that something is “a great idea” is not evidence.

I’m not saying this is easy. Pulling the plug on some of your favorite ideas is tough. However, I find it valuable both to do the exercise and to develop criteria for determining what should go forward and what shouldn’t. Most important, it has freed space to create and test new ideas and I feel that my load has lightened.

Definitely worth a try. A good project for your next Personal Quarterly Offsite.

Photo by Quang Nguyen Vinh from Pexels

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (https://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

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