“We’ll be done when we’re done. There’s just no way around it!”
How many times have you heard this from your product development, R&D, or innovation team? The team, often from the top down, refuses to commit to a timeline because they simply don’t know when the critical experiment will work just so. You can’t schedule your breakthrough so you can’t schedule your product launch.
This is among the most common, and least recognized, innovation risks: timing. There are at least three facets to this risk:
Competition. You’re much too astute to underestimate your competition. You have a great idea? You better assume that they had a similar idea. And the first one to market is generally the winner.
Time is money. You calculated a return on investment for the development project. The longer the project stretches the more expensive it gets. Furthermore, the return doesn’t begin until a successful launch. If you recalculate the ROI from the true start to the extended launch date, well… let’s just say it isn’t getting better!
Opportunity cost. Your most valuable staff is working on a project that might be going nowhere. They are confident, but they still haven’t scheduled that breakthrough. Is there another project that they should be working on?
You really can’t schedule breakthroughs, so what do you do?
Schedule your activities. Develop a plan and execute it. Hold yourself and your team accountable to the plan and the schedule. If you don’t have a plan, you don’t have a project. This is true regardless of what you are developing. I have seen this
Set accomplishment milestones and deadlines. Part of your project management system (Phase Gate, Agile, or other approaches) includes milestones and a project timeline. If you are not hitting these goals and dates, it is critically important to carefully reevaluate the project. The opportunity has not changed, but the solution may not be viable. Cut your losses when you need to.
Schedule routine reviews. Cross-functional reviews of each project should be scheduled on a regular basis, ideally quarterly. There are at least two reasons for this. First, it drives accountability to the plan for the team. No one wants to present in front of mid or senior-level management and have to say that they really haven’t done anything in the past three months. (If you have people unconcerned about that, it’s time to spend some coaching time with both them and their leaders.) Second, people who are less involved on a day-to-day basis will not have the same emotional connection to the project and the approach. They will be more willing to ask hard questions and make uncomfortable suggestions.
