Measuring Success with Bad Ideas
It might seem counter-intuitive, but one of the best measures of successful businesses is the number of bad ideas they generate.
Innovation is the lifeblood of any successful organization and ideas provide the raw material for innovation. But how businesses handle the bad ideas is as important as how they handle the good ones.
Analysis and consensus are important when ideas are rejected or when unsuccessful projects are terminated. Without them, rejected ideas and projects refuse to die, carried forward by inertia, sunk costs and a human need to avoid failure. This bleeds resources away from projects with better potential and, ultimately, impairs future innovation.
Generating a model that captures the essential structure of a proposed or existing project allows a team to focus on the process rather than on the players. This encourages creative thinking but provides a logical framework for evaluation.
The result is a stronger consensus among team members and better execution when the team does find the winning strategy.
