Jacob Dutton outlines four questions to test whether an innovation actually works: Does it meet a large market need? Does it solve a real problem better than what exists? Is it feasible and desirable? Does it fit your organization's strategy, resources, and culture? He warns that spending on ideas without proof of fit gets punished in tough economies.
Chapters
I wonder how many of the projects that you're working on are wasting time, wasting budgets, wasting maybe even hard-earned political capital that you've been developing. I'd urge you to zoom out and ask 3 things, right? Like, I'd ask, are the MVPs that we have out in the world, are they truly satisfying the needs of a large enough market? Are the prototypes that we're working on solving an actual problem with a better solution than what already exists today? And are they proven to be both feasible and desirable? And I'd also ask, you know, the territories that we're working in, do they align really well with our core business strategy, our resources, our culture, our skill set, our organizational structure? You know, this economic climate that we're in, I think, will be very unforgiving for innovators who are spending their time, their money on innovation theater, and are not laser-focused on generating evidence for fit.