Photo by Jonas Lee


The need to innovate is now a must-do for all organizations that would like a bright and positive future. The alternative is maintaining your status quo and hoping that no one finds your organization and decides to automate your business out of existence. 

Mainstream business analysts are currently writing that the future of business analysis requires both innovation and creativity. The primary thought driving this topic is, shift your focus from “functionalities” to “capabilities” moving past the project level of the enterprise, to the realm and mindset of the organization.

One reason this has become more difficult is that managing hundreds, or thousands, of ideas with spreadsheets and manual processes, is overwhelming to any team developing innovation. 

To evaluate many ideas in a short time takes both the talent to understand how to do it and the automation to collect, track, and separate the winners from the losers. To conduct this process effectively takes testing by many people throughout the organization, not just a few charged with innovation. 

There are five criteria you can use to help you choose ideas that have the ingredients to become genuinely successful:

  1. Winning ideas are always aligned with the organization’s business strategy. They are closely tied to the plan, so with every step of success the new product brings, the more successful the organization is in its marketplace.
  2. Winning ideas always offer sizable ROI savings or financial benefit, or both.
  3. Winning ideas implementation cost is within reach of the organization’s financial and people resources.
  4. Winning ideas remain in the wheelhouse of the organization and reinforce the organization’s market position.
  5. Winning ideas require the full commitment of the organization’s senior leaders.

These five criteria keep a company on track to what is truly important and create the most influence inside an organization and among its customers.