Commercializing Innovation: Turning Technology Breakthroughs into Products

CHAPTER 4

Winnowing Down: The Challenge of Opportunity Recognition

Recognizing the Opportunity

In the previous chapter, I presented a process model that searched multiple sources of ideas and then distilled them into possible opportunities that are aligned to the overall vision of the environment they were meant to serve. That process can be envisioned as a “funnel” in which ideas are constantly being drawn down to possible candidates.

The frequency and magnitude of the flow of ideas are determined by the capacity of the organization to absorb them. The importance of a “flow” is that not all projects will equally succeed. So the rate (that is, the number and breadth) of idea flow must be considered in a way that a) allows for failure of some ...