Innovation Funnel

The innovation pipeline has too many ideas and not enough decisions. Resources are spread thin across initiatives at different stages of maturity. Nobody wants to be the one to kill a project that someone senior championed.

The Innovation Funnel is a stage-gate model for managing innovation portfolios. You set up progressive stages — broad exploration early, focused development late — with clear criteria at each gate, so that most ideas fail cheaply and early, preserving resources for the few with genuine potential.