鈥淚f I鈥檇 known the world was ending, I would鈥檝e brought better books,鈥� is a famous line from the character Dale in the popular television series, 鈥淭he Walking Dead.鈥� Dale鈥檚 quote about the lack of great reading material during the zombie apocalypse was a lighthearted and funny scene in this otherwise heavy series. But it did make the larger point about the apocalypse. Nobody saw it coming and the survivors either didn鈥檛 properly prepare or didn鈥檛 anticipate things escalating so quickly.
Most corporate leaders like to think their innovation pipeline runs smooth and clean, like a finely tuned engine. After all, they鈥檝e been honing their Stage Gate processes for years. Surely by now everything is working as designed and they are prepared for a bright future of success, no need to prepare for the worst when everything is running smoothly.
But if you look hard enough at the portfolio and project data, you鈥檒l find odd cases worth investigating. A handful of efforts that have been ongoing for 10+ years, without passing any decision gates. Projects that have been rebuffed multiple times, repeatedly failing to make the business case for investment. Yet they keep spinning in the background, year after year.
Is anyone still putting meaningful time into these projects? Are they truly still active, or are they the walking dead, wreaking efficiency havoc on the rest of the innovation pipeline? Ask around the org, and you may find the answers are in short supply. Is there a constant refrain of, 鈥淲e have too many projects in the organization for available resources?鈥� Maybe you鈥檝e discovered some uncomfortable truths. Or maybe no one knows the true story anymore.
It's tempting to think that these are edge cases better left alone. That鈥檚 a mistake. Zombie projects are usually warning signs of deeper problems buried in the guts of your innovation process, slowly hunting down productivity and draining resources. And while you may not be facing a full on zombie apocalypse, it鈥檚 best to prepare early and ensure it doesn鈥檛 lead to one.
The importance of 鈥淧lan C鈥�
Most companies, in their innovation and NPD processes, have key decision gates. These gates are activated whenever an innovation effort has reached a key milestone. It either needs funding or executive approval (or both) to continue into a more committed phase of development.
Leaders typically view these as binary Go/Kill (or Go vs No-Go) decisions. That may seem sensible, indeed they are constantly being told they need to make more tough 鈥渒ill鈥� decisions, but in practice it leads to massive inefficiency and underperformance across the innovation portfolio.
Why? Because they鈥檙e missing (or under-utilizing) a crucial third option 鈥� and often the one that makes the most sense. It鈥檚 what we call the 鈥淗old鈥� decision.
Your indecision is killing innovation
For many executives, the idea of a 鈥淗old鈥� decision is anathema. It feels like fuzzy thinking at best, abdication of responsibility at worst. But to build a strong innovation practice, it鈥檚 imperative to flip this logic on its head. Indeed, if the only decisions in your innovation gates are 鈥測es鈥� and 鈥渘o鈥�, you are unwittingly creating a whirlpool of indecision within the organization.
Imagine you are the CEO of a farm equipment company. One of your product teams has built the prototype for an autonomous grain harvester. Marketing studies suggest that it would be desired by customers, and possibly a runaway hit. Manufacturing believes they could scale production while remaining cost competitive. But it is unclear whether the harvester would be compatible with the prevailing industry business model. Furthermore, the macroeconomy looks like it is headed for a downturn 鈥� a terrible time to introduce a visionary new product. And the model for support, service, and field integration with existing farm fleets still needs work.
What do you do?
On the surface, a Kill decision might seem sensible. In most scenarios, moving forward into full development with the new grain harvester would be a financial disaster waiting to happen. Yet this is precisely why your company has remained middle-of-the-pack in the farm equipment industry for so long. Not enough bold bets. Too little 鈥渞eal鈥� innovation. If you can鈥檛 take a calculated risk on this opportunity, when will you ever? Killing all the most promising innovation opportunities is a recipe for ending up on the scrap heap of history.
But it鈥檚 equally hard to justify a Go decision. Let鈥檚 assume the dream scenario (in which you disrupt the industry) doesn鈥檛 materialize. If so, then worst case, you鈥檝e gone all-in, investing substantially to build and market a product that ultimately flops in the market. In many companies, this is a career-ending mistake. Whereas in the best case, you ask the team to 鈥渢ry again鈥� and come back when they鈥檝e de-risked the opportunity appropriately. They keep working in the background, stuck in a spin cycle, never quite getting over the hump. No one thinks they should abandon the effort, given the huge upside. But year after year, the project keeps sapping time and energy that might be better used on other projects with clearer-cut ROI.
Chances are, you鈥檝e got more of these 鈥渟oft Go鈥� projects than you realize. And as they accumulate, the backlog is slowly throttling your innovation resources. Even worse, you are draining the morale of your innovators. The more they see zombies kicking around, the more they wonder if the company will ever innovate with force and focus. And cutting all the dead weight isn鈥檛 much better 鈥� because you are also cutting the institutional knowledge that comes along with those efforts. This leaves the innovation pipeline barren and destined to underperform.
Learn how to hold 鈥榚m
Many companies don鈥檛 have a Hold option at all; others may have a nominal 鈥淗old鈥� choice embedded in their innovation process, but mostly they don鈥檛 use it. In our experience, very few organizations apply the Hold decision as the strategic lever it deserves to be.
Nonetheless, before you run to really enable a Hold option in your decision-making, let鈥檚 take a breath. You may have a 鈥渉old鈥� decision defined, but the issue is using it effectively. Most companies would fail to enable the changes in decision making behavior required to implement a Hold option if they tried. That鈥檚 because they haven鈥檛 built the necessary supporting structures into the innovation process. While it鈥檚 not just about decision making tools, hold decisions are about transparency and visibility to ALL projects so that teams can understand the impacts of ALL decisions. That said, most organizations are missing at least one of three critical levers:
- Opportunity 鈥淩estarts鈥�. In a vacuum, making a Hold decision is no different than a Kill decision. If the project gets banished to the archives, never to be seen again, it might as well be dead. Therefore, a good Hold decision necessarily includes pre-specified conditions for taking another look. This can either be calendar-based (鈥渓et鈥檚 review our options again in 12 months鈥�) or event-based (鈥渓et鈥檚 resume this after the merger with Acme Corporation鈥�) 鈥� or both. Critically, if you have a good innovation management software system, you can automate the business rules that trigger these conditions 鈥� creating an in-built 鈥渞estart pipeline鈥� without any extra management overhead.
- Strategic portfolio reviews. An even better mechanism for revisiting stalled projects is in aggregate, at the level of strategic business objectives. If senior executives are properly orchestrating the innovation portfolio toward desired outcomes, then it becomes much easier to resuscitate potential game-changers that have been put on hold. Disciplined innovation leaders can manage the confluence of 鈥渋nvestment prerequisites鈥�, working proactively across the portfolio to coax the necessary and sufficient conditions into alignment. From there, it鈥檚 easy to bet big 鈥� knowing you hold a winning hand.
- Mission-based metrics. One of the big problems lurking in most innovation portfolios is that each project is considered individually, and the people pushing those projects forward are goaled on that project鈥檚 success or failure in isolation. This is a recipe for people to keep gaming the system, finding ways to perpetuate doomed efforts to make their workload appear robust. But if your company can manage the innovation portfolio strategically (see previous bullet), then you can also create different incentives that encourage the right behaviors for the right reasons. The key is to reward innovators more on the overall success of the innovation enterprise than their specific corners of it, where success is often largely beyond their control.
To some, instituting these changes may seem like a herculean effort. However, in our experience, it is more often an evolution, not a revolution, of current practices. Typically, these steps end up solving related problems that had already been plaguing the innovation pipeline. Once you鈥檝e committed to the necessary reforms, the change management is easier than one might expect 鈥� and the benefits more numerous as well.
The reason most organizations never put these reforms in place is that they aren鈥檛 motivated by a central imperative demanding change. Our hope here is to convince you that the juice is most definitely worth the squeeze. Once you鈥檝e got the Hold decision up and running properly, just watch and see how much more of a high-performance engine your innovation pipeline becomes and ensure you stave off an actual innovation apocalypse. And if you do end up having to fight through one because of so many rogue projects, this way you鈥檒l be prepared with adequate reading material.
Ensure your innovation pipeline is running smoothly with Accolade
To drive productivity in your innovation pipeline requires visibility, and orchestration across an innovation organization. It鈥檚 impossible to document, aggregate, and track every moving part of your innovation machine manually, and it鈥檚 nearly impossible to pull this off across disparate systems.
That鈥檚 why leading innovation organizations use . It鈥檚 innovation management software that houses all your innovation data in one place and integrates with the enterprise systems you already use to keep that data up to date. Global companies use Accolade to tie innovation initiatives to growth targets, make data visible to everyone who needs it, and orchestrate activities with the whole portfolio in mind.
While improving efficiencies and killing the dreaded zombie projects that bog down the organization is important, Accolade users get so much more. It enables innovators to shift to a growth innovation mindset that not only capitalizes on efficiency but positions your whole enterprise to innovate and grow faster than ever before, bringing increased opportunities and revenue growth to the innovation table. Accolade can help you do this, and we鈥檇 love to show you how.
See how growth innovation can uplevel your innovation organization: !