Free innovation - "What's in the cupboard?"

I tend to ask this question in quite a lot of companies, although it is particularly important in the development of new products/features/ventures!  When new initiatives are put in place, everyone seems to somehow forget the past.  Ongoing projects are respected but innovation pipeline, idea banks etc. are ‘created’ and then people studiously start to fill them up with new stuff.

I was the same until someone opened a filing drawer in their desk once and I spotted a strange bit of plastic.  After a bit of conversation it turned out this was actually an idea for a medical device that the person had thought of a few years previously.  I’d like to say it was a stroke of genius but it wasn’t.  Actually it was so bad it would probably only be good if you decided euthenasia was a growth area.  However, the more people I talked to, the more I realised that there was interesting stuff that had been canned in the past for various reasons but which might hold value now.

It stands to reason if you think about it.  A good innovation process will put some stuff on hold while you await specific conditions to be met.  That might mean a component needs to hit a certain price point or someone has to invent something new.  You’re just keeping it in a holding pattern waiting for the world to turn enough that it becomes worth something.  Well, this was the same situation.  A lot of good ideas in this company had been halted because there was not enough money, willpower, time, management attention and intelligence to carry on.  Some of the ideas were just hobby projects that never saw the light of day because the person changed jobs, lost enthusiasm or a myriad other reasons.

Okay the cupboard is a metaphor………..or is it a simile……no, it’s a metaphor.  There will be things in cupboards, drawers, hidden on computers and locked away in people’s heads.  However, I’ve never seen this exercise fail to find interesting ideas whose time has come.  You can ignore all this previous work and thinking but why make life hard for yourself.