Dealing with Unfit Ideas and Zombie Projects
Most corporate innovation units deal with “zombie” projects. Those are the projects that are killed by managers or executives because they do not match the strategy, do not hold enough potential – or more likely – do not have the right timing.
Such projects are often kept alive to some extent by employees who then end up wasting valuable resources on projects that only rarely are brought back into the innovation project pool. A key reason for this could be that that managers or executives do not like to have their decisions second-guessed and thus their willingness to look at “older” projects is low.
In an earlier blog post, 7 Challenges for Corporate Innovation Units, I argued that the window of opportunity gets smaller and smaller and the time given to become successful decreases. In short, cash cows are a dying race. Corporate innovation units need to hit smaller windows more often in order to create strong return on investments.
I think more and more projects will be dismissed because of the timing issue. This is often a waste of good ideas and I think companies need to build systems in which they can put good projects on hold and bring them back when timing is right.
I wonder how companies should do this and it would be great to get some input from you.
As a starter, I can refer to an interesting discussion I had with John Johnson, who talked about how he worked with what he called idea baskets – compared to the idea funnel – while he led innovation initiatives at PepsiCo.
This post might also give you some food for thoughts for this discussion: A New Front End of Innovation?
I also wonder if and how social media tools and services can play a role here.
Your comments are highly appreciated.
Stefan: It is not at all unusual for management to refuse to kill a project outright, but never agree to the critical approvals necessary to advance it. Some years ago, Bath and Body Works executive management decided that it would have a critical initiatives list. Of the various initiatives in process or considered, management asked the sponsors to make their best case for each, based on strategic merit, business potential, resource requirements and success probabiity. They drew the line at 8 projects. Anything that fell below the line, was not to be managed; i.e. no resources would be dedicated.
I can see merit in this approach. I don't know whether this discipline is maintained to this day, but it seems right to me. Too many projects aren't killed outright that honestly need a bullet in the head. Others would benefit fom incubation, but sometimes one must make tough decisions about managing scarce resources.
I agree Stefan
I take an interest in the psychology of such behaviour – as the economy gets a bit scarier people are liable to play safe at a time when the real need is to innovate. This may make people even less willing to consider revisiting 'unfit ideas' and zombie projects. My belief is that these could be offered to groups of individuals for whom the risk is lesser and the need greater.