STEAL THIS IDEA

The Innovation Funnel

BY MARTY NEUMEIER

The biggest hurdle to innovation is the corporate longing for certainty about costs, market size, revenues, prots, and other quantities, all of which cant be known when an idea is new. Ironically, there seems to be no hurdle to investing in dying businesses, decaying strategies, and shrinking markets, all of which can be seen without a crystal ball. It seems we prefer the devil we know.

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The best way to get around the deviland all his advocatesis to allow the company to crank up its condence stage by stage. Luckily, theres already a workable model for this process: stage-gate investing. It was pioneered by oil entrepreneurs who lacked certainty about which wells would produce black gold and which would zzle. It was further developed by venture capitalists who lacked certainty about how trends, markets, and people would combine to produce prots. There are four funding stages in this process:

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S TAG E - G AT E I N N OVAT I O N

S TA G E 1 SEED MONEY TO D E V E LO P CONCEPT

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S TAG E - G AT E I N N OVAT I O N

S TA G E 2 TO D E V E LO P S T R AT EGY SMALL BET

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S TAG E - G AT E I N N OVAT I O N

S TA G E 3 MEDIUM BET TO M O D E L A N D T ES T

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S TAG E - G AT E I N N OVAT I O N

S TA G E 4 TO L AU N C H IN MARKET L ARGE BET

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S TAG E - G AT E I N N OVAT I O N

S TA G E 1 SEED MONEY TO D E V E LO P CONCEPT

S TA G E 2 TO D E V E LO P S T R AT EGY SMALL BET

S TA G E 3 MEDIUM BET TO M O D E L A N D T ES T

S TA G E 4 TO L AU N C H IN MARKET L ARGE BET

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With stage-gate investing, an idea is vetted stage by stage using a kind of natural selection, so that big bets are only made after the idea has been largely de-risked. Stage-gate investing works best when you have a portfolio of innovations in the pipeline. The vetting process then acts a ltration system that separates the great ideas from those that are underpowered, shortsighted, unstrategic, or off-brand. It creates an innovation funnel that lets you vet new concepts step by step, reducing the fear of failure at each step.

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Find more Marty Neumeier ideas to steal at liquidagency.com/blog

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SOURCE: THE DESIGNFUL COMPAN Y BY MA RT Y NEUMEIER