Innovation budget time

“If only we’d had a better budget we’d have been able to produce a better…” is an often heard lament in innovation. Yet one of the biggest and best funded innovation projects I have ever witnessed was a total disaster resulting in nothing of value being created and millions wasted.

I’d argue that the smaller the budget and tighter the timeframe, within reason, the more likely something is to succeed.

I was involved in a project for a major household insurer and we believed we’d identified a significant additional revenue stream triggered by customer contacts. In order to deliver this it would require some significant system changes and the insurer was reluctant to undertake these changes. We solved the problem by developing a paper based system for a proof of concept test and rolled it out rapidly. The paper based system proved the concept with no additional cost or time required and the project was a huge success.