Choosing the Right Options

...it is important to select only the most promising ideas to pursue.

Using these ideas helps you see what your options are, and how the would help your organization. But you still need to decide which of these options to choose, and justify that decision. Each option you pursue views opportunity costs in time and money, so it is important to select only the most promising ideas to pursue.

So how do you decide on this? You could just run with the ideas that attract you and act on your hunches. That is a little like a gambler throwing the chips down randomly or backing a horse in a race because they have a "feeling" about it. Or you could use a more systematic approach. You can never make innovation a cast-iron certainty, because there is too much uncertainty involved--will technology work, is there a market, will the competition introduce something else before us? But you can convert the uncertainty into some form of calculated risk.

ACTION POINT: Use some for of check on innovation projects before you start on them. Will the reward you expect be worth the risk and cost of the project?