The Innovation Gut Check You Can’t Afford to Skip
five areas every leader should pay attention to before green-lighting innovations
If there’s one universal truth about innovation, it’s this: uncertainty is the cost of admission. Every new product, service, or business model comes with risk. Wasted resources, customer apathy, copycat competitors, the list goes on. But in times of market turbulence like we are seeing today, those unknowns can feel so heavy that organizations stop moving altogether.
For many innovators, the problem isn’t the changing landscape itself; it’s the lack of visibility into where things are going. It’s the uncertainty and ambiguity that makes it almost impossible to confidently place an educated bets. Too often, this leads to companies “waiting out the storm” instead of using innovation is the way it’s most effective at its core: to solve problems.
One way innovators can try to cover all their bases and eliminate as many of these risks as possible is through an Innovation Risk Audit. It’s a structured way to scan an idea being prepared for launch, and get a better sense of how “market ready” something is before significant resources are invested.
It starts by asking questions across five dimensions:
Product-Market Fit – Does the concept solve a meaningful customer problem, or just seem like a “good idea”?
Commercial Viability – Can this be delivered profitably and sustainably at scale?
Customer Experience – Have we taken the time to optimize the customer experience before, during, and after purchase?
Brand Alignment – Does it reinforce who we are and what we stand for, and do customers think we’re the right ones to deliver it?
Go-to-Market Readiness – Do we have the marketing, distribution, training, and metrics to ensure it succeeds in the real world?
By focusing in on these five lenses, organizations surface blind spots early, when course corrections are inexpensive. The audit doesn’t eliminate 100% of the risks, but it ensures the risks you take are deliberate, not accidental.
The concept builds on themes from my book Risk-Free Innovation: 10 Ways to Manage Uncertainty and was a focal point in my recent webinar, Scrappy but Strategic: Practical Tools for Innovating in Uncertainty. The key message is simple: innovation doesn’t fail because it’s risky; it fails because teams overlook where the risk truly lies, and don’t give themselves the best chance at success. Even the best baseball player in the world won’t have over a 40% success rate at the plate, but that doesn’t mean he’s standing in front of the pitcher blindfolded!
If you’d like to dive deeper, and see how this approach might look in your own context, I offer a complimentary Innovation Risk Audit consultation: a practical way to pressure-test a few initiatives and learn where to focus your attention.
Innovation will always live with uncertainty. The difference is whether you see it coming.
