Chairs swing side to side; eyes fall on the presentation materials. Alan watches the faces around the table. Everyone tries to be invisible. Eye contact ceases. Alan thinks his pitch to save the failing project was great. His boss looks at her boss, the project sponsor. The words finally come, slowly at first: "We'll take your idea under advisement." Then faster and faster: "...not part of the original plan - we can't do that...not our business model - we can't do that... not cost effective - we cannot do that." Chairs swing side to side; heads nod smugly. Everyone knows the idea is dead, dead, DEAD.
This scene is played out in companies big and small around the world. We call this phenomenon "Ideaicide". Ideaicide muzzles innovation and ruins companies, yet it is in your power to do something about it. Ideaicide is your problem.
Every great company starts out small, churning out ideas and looking for a breakthrough. When they stumble on to an innovation, they milk it for all it is worth. Company structure, policies and culture are then set in stone to support the original success. In today's business world, a company's most important asset is still its ability to continually come up with new ideas.So how do you advance great ideas and personal vision through corporate cultures, politics and organizational alignments that are inclined to resist them? How do you avoid Ideaicide and get what you want at work?
We will look at when and how to pitch ideas, and to whom they should be pitched. Using the movie industry as a background, with its long history with the pitching process, we will divide the steps to success into two distinct areas: the audience (people) and your storyline (content). To avoid Ideaicide, you must get an audience to believe in your idea and to see the possibilities in your story.