Seeking the Unicorn

Imagine innovation as a horse race. Which horse should you bet on? The favorite? A potential dark horse? Fortunately, in the corporate world, there exists no shortage of high-paid experts and managers to help you make a well calculated bet. In fact, corporate actors behave as though they know exactly which horse will win the race. They will of course have conducted their research. The proof of their due diligence resides in a 95-slide PowerPoint deck replete with Excel charts forecasting hockey-stick-like winnings for the chosen horse. The journey of these PowerPoint slides is itself a tortuous odyssey filled with months of setbacks, seemingly infinite edits, and, at long last, final approval. No senior executive will read 95 slides, though. You must reduce the entire world of complexity and uncertainty down to 3 slides max. Based on these 3 slides, the senior executive is supposed to somehow know whether your proposal is a good idea. Call it years of experience or, more likely, a gut feeling. Whatever it is, the executive will feign utterly cool confidence and release millions of funds for your horse. And off you are to the races with victory right within your grasp!

The process just described is supposed to produce the elusive unicorn which delivers the next generation of groundbreaking business for the company. Unfortunately, the unicorn slowly but surely turns into a walking-dead horse. The scenes of this tragic comedy unfold in the following manner:

• Lost race #1: the data still show this is the right horse, and it’s always worked before.
• Lost race #2: let’s do some benchmarking to see how other horses are managed.
• Lost race #3: let’s bring in a more senior jockey.
• Lost race #4: let’s hire a consulting firm.
• Lost race #5: let’s increase funding.
• Lost race #6: let’s bring in an external jockey.
• Lost race #7: let’s decrease funding.
• Lost race #8: let's find other bettors to fund your horse.
• Lost race #9: let’s discuss other topics. 

Eventually, the horse disappears from all official communications. Every now and then, though, you might catch a glimpse of the specter in the yearly budgeting process, casually trotting around the company and finding new pastures upon which to eat up more company treasure. You might even know someone who once worked with this horse. It goes without saying that this person always knew it was a dead horse, but someone higher up the food chain took the decision. Now, The Walking Dead Horse is in Season 9 with nobody watching anymore, but the studio hasn’t canceled the show. Nobody even knows why.

For those unfamiliar with this metaphor, it originates from a Dakota Indian aphorism, “When you discover that you are riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount.” Yet, time and again, corporate executives and managers simply do not have the good sense or courage to dismount. The failure to do so is everywhere but simultaneously nowhere to be found on the lips of the actors on the corporate stage, not in yearly reports, not on resumes, not in HR discussions, not in LinkedIn posts. This unwillingness to dismount is a wholly unnecessary tragedy for innovation, the company, its employees, its customers, and, worst of all, society. 

A better way exists. When you are venturing outside of your core business, make sure you have a clearly defined strategy, a structured set of go criteria by which to measure the maturity and attractiveness of your business model, a testing plan for the assumptions of your business model, dedicated resources, and commitment to reintegrate the project if it is successful. Most importantly, whenever it turns out the project is not resonating with the customer ecosystem, have the courage to terminate the project. Nothing is worse for your innovation culture than dead horses.