The Most Dangerous Lie in Innovation: Over-Scoring Under-Thinking

Let me guess - you've got a beautiful innovation scoring system. Weighted criteria, pretty charts, sophisticated matrices that make you feel all scientific and objective.

Photo by Pixabay

But…

your gut probably knows more than your spreadsheet.

"But wait!" I hear you cry.
"We need data-driven decisions! We can't just go with our gut!"

Sure, spreadsheets are comfortable.

They give us the illusion of control, of rationality, of being proper grown-up business people who make proper grown-up decisions. But here's the thing: truly disruptive innovations often look terrible on paper.

Think about it.

If Netflix had run a traditional scoring model when considering streaming, the numbers would have screamed "DANGER!"
Bandwidth costs? Astronomical.
Existing revenue cannibalization? Massive.
Technical feasibility? Questionable at best.

Yet Reed Hastings' gut said "this is the future," and well... here we are, binge-watching our way through another series.

But I'm not here to tell you to throw away your scoring systems. I'm here to help you understand when to trust them - and more importantly, when to ignore them.

The Three Deadly Sins of Innovation Scoring

1. The False Precision Trap You've seen it
   Those beautifully precise scoring models with weighted criteria down to two decimal places. As if rating "market potential" as 7.35 instead of 7.4 actually means something. This isn't accounting, folks. You're trying to predict the future, not balance the books.

2. The Consensus Killer Committee-based scoring systems
   are where radical ideas go to die. When you need everyone to agree on a score, you inevitably drift toward the safe middle ground. And guess what lives in the safe middle ground? Mediocrity, that's what.

3. The Framework Fallacy
   Your scoring framework is based on what's worked before. But true innovation, the kind that changes markets and behaviors, often breaks existing frameworks. If Henry Ford had used a scoring system, "faster horses" would have won every time.

Finding the Sweet Spot

So when should you use scoring systems?
For incremental innovations - the kind that improve existing products or services - go ahead and score away. These fit nicely into existing frameworks because they're extensions of what you already know.

But for potentially disruptive innovations, you need a different approach.
Here's what to do instead:

1. Use scoring as a conversation starter,
   not a decision maker Your scoring system should prompt the right questions, not provide the final answers. "This scored low on feasibility - but what if we looked at it differently?"

2. Trust informed instincts
   Note that I said informed instincts, not random hunches. The best innovators combine deep market knowledge with the courage to act on pattern recognition that doesn't fit neatly into spreadsheets.

3. Run cheap experiments
   Instead of endless scoring sessions, find ways to test your hypotheses in the real world. A $10,000 prototype that proves (or disproves) your gut feeling is worth more than a million-dollar scoring exercise.

The Real Innovation Scorecard

Want a better way to evaluate potentially game-changing ideas? Ask these questions:

• Does it make you slightly uncomfortable?
  (If not, it's probably not innovative enough)

• Can you test it quickly and cheaply?
  (If not, break it down until you can)

• Does it solve a real problem that people care about?
  (Not just a problem that exists on paper, not an opinion from a useless interview - check out The Mom Test)

• Would anyone miss it if it disappeared?
  (The only true measure of value)

Here's the hard truth: your innovation scoring system isn't making you more objective - it's making you more predictable. And in a world where the next big thing often looks like a bad idea until it's not, predictable is dangerous.

So by all means, keep your scoring systems. They're great for managing innovation portfolios and incremental improvements. But when your gut is screaming that something's important, even though the numbers look terrible? That's when real innovation leaders earn their keep.

Because at the end of the day, no one ever changed the world by following a scorecard.

Remember: Spreadsheets are great servants but terrible masters. Use them wisely, and know when to trust that knot in your stomach that says "this could be big" - even when all your carefully weighted criteria are telling you to run the other way.

After all, the biggest innovation successes often start with someone saying

"This is probably a terrible idea, but what if..."