To Innovate, Choose

The best way to generate a great idea is to have a lot of ideas. It’s the next step that may be less intuitive.

While describing its model of innovation management in a recent piece on LinkedIn, Oracle helpfully points out that the process ultimately means making choices among many, many competing ideas.

“Self-Reliance comes from innovation:”

Organization may have multiple requirements & ideas of which some cannot be met profitably. Such ideas or requirements should be killed at this very stage. It’s very important to expose potential failures at early stage. This helps allocate budgets to best ideas & critical requirements rather than mediocre ones. So goal should be that shut down the ideas which do not meet business justification or requirement. This prevents choking of best ideas, with ideas that can’t deliver value or won’t deliver value to business.

It was a useful reminder that turning that great idea into a profitable business means ruthlessly killing the ideas that don’t measure up. To innovate, choose.