3 Innovation Decision Traps That Kill Breakthrough Ideas (And How to Avoid Them)
Killer Innovations with Phil McKinney - A Show About Ideas Creativity And Innovation
Unlocking Breakthrough Innovations: Patterns and Traps
This chapter delves into the surprising factors that contribute to successful innovations, especially examining how unconventional ideas can lead to significant breakthroughs. It also identifies decision traps that hinder innovators, urging them to ask critical questions to discover potential winners amidst market saturation.
Every breakthrough innovation starts the same way: everyone thinks it's a terrible idea. Twitter was dismissed as “breakfast updates.” Google looked “too simple.” Facebook seemed limited to “just college kids.”
Yet these “stupid ideas” became some of the biggest winners in tech history. After 30 years making innovation decisions at Fortune 100 companies, I've identified why smart people consistently miss breakthrough opportunities—and how to spot them before everyone else does.
Why Smart People Miss Breakthrough Ideas
The problem isn't intelligence or experience. It's that we ask the wrong questions when evaluating new innovations. We filter breakthrough ideas through frameworks designed for incremental improvements, not revolutionary changes.
Most innovation decisions fail because of three specific thinking traps that cause us to dismiss ideas with the highest potential for transformation.
The 3 Innovation Decision Traps
Trap #1: The Useless Filter
The Question That Kills Innovation: “What existing problem does this solve?”
Why It's Wrong: Breakthrough innovations don't solve existing problems—they create entirely new behaviors and meet needs people don't even know they have.
Real-World Example: Airbnb seemed insane when it launched. Staying with strangers? Seeing them in the kitchen? The “problem” it solved—expensive hotels—wasn't what made it revolutionary. It created an entirely new behavior: experiential travel that hotels couldn't provide.
The Better Question: “What new human behavior could this enable?”
Trap #2: The Simplicity Dismissal
The Question That Kills Innovation: “Where are all the features? This looks too basic.”
Why It's Wrong: Simplicity isn't a lack of sophistication—it's the hardest thing to achieve. When something is designed to be insanely simple to use, that signals massive effort and thought behind the design.
Real-World Example: Google was just a white page with a search box while Yahoo crammed everything onto their homepage. Google looked unprofessional and incomplete, but it eliminated complexity everyone thought was necessary.
The Better Question: “What complexity is this eliminating?”
Trap #3: The Market Size Mistake
The Question That Kills Innovation: “How big is the addressable market? Why limit yourself so severely?”
Why It's Wrong: Breakthrough innovations don't serve existing markets—they create entirely new markets. The biggest opportunities come from ideas that seem too niche or focused.
Real-World Example: Facebook was just for college students requiring .edu email addresses. Critics said the market was too narrow. But social media users didn't exist before Facebook—the company created the entire market.
The Better Question: “What market could this create?”
The Innovation Decision Framework
When evaluating ideas that seem “stupid” or “too simple,” use this three-question filter:
- What new behavior could this enable?
- What complexity could this eliminate?
- What market could this create?
These questions force you to look beyond surface-level problems and features to identify transformational potential.
How to Apply This Framework
For Investors: Stop asking “What problem does this solve?” Start asking “What behavior does this create?”
For Product Teams: Stop adding features. Start eliminating complexity.
For Leaders: Stop looking for big existing markets. Start looking for new market creation potential.
For Innovators: Stop following what everyone else thinks is smart. Start looking for ideas that violate conventional wisdom.
The Pattern Recognition Advantage
The current AI boom follows the exact same pattern as the dot-com bubble. Every company is racing to add AI to their pitch, just like they added “.com” in 1999.
But the real breakthrough opportunities? They're probably something completely different—ideas that look terrible to everyone following the AI herd.
The companies that will win are those that can recognize breakthrough potential when it violates everything the market thinks is smart.
The Courage to Act on “Stupid” Ideas
Recognition is only half the battle. The hardest part is having the courage to act on opportunities when they contradict expert opinion and market consensus.
The biggest question isn't whether you can spot these opportunities—it's whether you'll have the conviction to pursue them when everyone else thinks they're terrible ideas.
Because twenty years from now, someone will be writing about the “stupid idea” they missed in 2025 that became the next trillion-dollar company.
Want the Behind-the-Scenes Story?
This framework came from some painful (and expensive) lessons about dismissing breakthrough ideas. I share the full story—including how I wrote off the team that created Twitter after Apple destroyed their original business—in this week's Studio Notes.
Listen to the full analysis: Subscribe to the Killer Innovations podcast for deeper dives into innovation decision frameworks.
See the framework in action: Watch my case study of how these exact decision traps led to HP's $1.2 billion WebOS disaster.
To learn more about innovation decision traps that kill breakthrough ideas, listen to this week's show: 3 Innovation Decision Traps That Kill Breakthrough Ideas (And How to Avoid Them).
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