Being The CEO’s Pet Innovation Project Is Not Always A Good Thing

There is an interesting paradox in corporate innovation. It is virtually impossible to get any real innovation done without support from the CEO and their leadership team.

However, not all leadership support is created equal.

The worst thing that can happen to an innovation team is to become the CEO’s pet project. When you are in that situation, the support you are receiving feels good at the beginning. The CEO will be unlocking doors for your team that are typically closed to most innovation teams.

But there is a catch… Your team is now condemned to succeed!

The attention your one innovation project is receiving from leadership is unwarranted until you have tested your business idea and validated that it has real potential to succeed. Before that happens, all innovation ideas should have permission to fail.

Being the CEO’s pet project means that your team can no longer afford to fail.

Leaders tend to think that they can pick the winning ideas from day one. In reality, at the beginning good and bad ideas are indistinguishable from each other. So when the CEO chooses you as their pet innovation project, they have put their reputation as the “all knowing leader” on the line. This is a tough burden for an innovation team to carry.

This is how companies end up with zombie innovation projects.

The team is afraid to tell the CEO that “their baby is ugly”. So they keep up with the innovation theatre and pretend they are making progress. By having a pet innovation project, the CEO increases the chances of an expensive failure. They will be pouring resources into an untested idea for a while, before they learn that it is not going to work.

Instead of having a pet project, CEOs should have pet innovation portfolios where they make small bets on multiple ideas. They should then allow these teams time to test those ideas and only increase investment in ideas that are showing traction.

Ultimately CEOs need to accept that leaders cannot create growth, what they can do is create the right conditions for growth to happen.