One of the most damaging
phrases during any business meeting is, "We've
tried that before." Often, one failed attempt at a project,
even years before, is enough to disqualify it forever. How silly
is that? Projects fail for a variety of reasons -- lack of planning,
bad timing, bad product -- so a project that might have failed in
the past could still become an important part of your business today.
In most cases, perpetrators of the "We've tried that" gambit
are merely trying to avoid further discussion of failures they find
embarrassing. Avoiding re-evaluation of past ideas, like dismissing
new and challenging ideas, is a way to insure both the status quo
and their position in the company. Instead of fostering the all-important
communication that companies need to succeed, such tactics are designed
to quash conversation -- a nicer way of saying, "Shut up and
do it my way."
For the sake of your company, your job and your career, you can't
let others stop the re-evaluation of old ideas. The seeds of new
growth and productivity may be found there. You will have to make
some extra effort, and do some investigating, but you may find
that the time is right today for an idea that may have failed
in the past.
While it might not be popular, at least at the start, someone needs
to champion the best of these older ideas, even it if might be
uncomfortable for the older members of the organization. One
success will be enough
to show that there is gold to be spun from failed projects, no
matter how embarrassing their initial failure.
Your most important task is to discover why a project may have
failed in the past. Was the market not ready? Was the product
flawed? Was
it too expensive? Once you have a clear idea of these issues,
see if any have been solved by the simple passage of time. In the
best
cases, you will find that component prices have dropped sharply
or that new technology makes cost a minor consideration. Maybe
people
weren't ready for your new service a year ago, but changes in
society have created a new market. If time, and innovation by others,
has
solved these previous obstacles, you might be able to re-launch
the project immediately with few changes. That is a significant
return
on investment for something that had been forgotten and buried.
In other cases, even where the project is fundamentally flawed,
you may still be able to extract useful parts. Perhaps a particular
device
was a non-starter, but some internal technology can be developed
into a project of its own. There is something good to be found
in every idea. When podcasting first started, many wanted it
to be as
different from commercial radio as possible. It was my belief,
though, that podcasting should take all the best from radio and
discard those
elements that were limiting its popularity today. Radio provided
many good examples of show format, advertising and sponsorship
methodologies and audio techniques. Podcasters adopted these
elements. On the other
hand, mass market orientations and lowest common denominator programming
were left on the bone pile, where they belonged.
Every business should have some method of re-evaluating past ideas
and separating the gold from the surrounding dross. I believe it
is an important part of any structured innovation program. So many
companies are seeking methods to generate more and better ideas
to help their companies grow, but they often ignore the ideas
that are
sitting there in front of them. While companies can, and should,
continue to develop entirely new ideas, developing additional ideas
from past failures and false starts can add a tremendous boost
to the total. The fact is, companies are always developing products
and services that are far ahead of their time due to excessive
cost
or complexity. Your goal is to store, sift and recognize those
ideas that are now viable.
Just because an idea may have failed in the past doesn't make it
an automatic candidate for rejection in the present. Many ideas
can take years or even decades to find the right combination
of market,
technology and culture. Personally and professionally, you are
well advised to look to old failures for new, profitable ideas.
To dismiss
these ideas out of hand is to discard ideas that could take your
career to unimagined heights.
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