Many companies have a policy of incubating new activities. However, while a great number of them manage to successfully experiment with new offerings, very few of these reach the scaling-up stage. This is partly explained by the risks inherent in innovation—but also by causes that the company could give itself the means to better control. In particular, it appears that many teams do not have a sufficiently methodical approach to anticipating large-scale deployment. Feedback from some thirty successful experiments shows that it is fruitful to consider the desired point of arrival from the outset, so as to better prepare the journey that will allow getting there:

- Equip yourself with a both precise and ambitious vision of the desired outcome. What will your project look like once deployed? Successful projects are characterized by proposing a bold vision, which notably shakes off short-term constraints.

- Starting from this target, work backwards. What skills and resources will you need to reach the target? How can you acquire them? How can you convince the desired number of customers? Review your options for achieving this: development of what already exists, acquisitions, partnerships, etc.

The idea is not to define a fixed deployment plan: uncertainty when launching a new activity is far too high. But clarifying at a very early stage the target being aimed at and the options for reaching it helps prepare the way in which to move beyond the experimentation stage.

Source: The Missing Discipline Behind Failure to Scale, Andy Binns, Christine Griffin, MIT Sloan Management Review, April 2023.