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Using innovation to grow sales and profits is an accepted business concept.

Actually taking action on innovations – especially big idea innovations – is scary for many.Measure Innovation Risk

The Eureka! Ranch team has developed a new PROJECT P&L tool for helping innovators build support and confidence among leadership, investors and other stake holders.

I’ve learned over the years that the P&L statement for innovation projects is the key to building support. It’s the place where all of your assumptions about sales, profits and return on investment come together on one piece of paper.

Sadly, many innovators have not been taught how to use their PROJECT P&L as an innovation acceleration tool.

With PROJECT P&L the Eureka! Ranch team helps you do risk adjusted math on AN EXISTING INNOVATION PROJECT. Having identified the three highest risk / variance areas they then help you craft a plan to de-risk these areas. The bottom line is a reduction of risk of failure by up to 80%.

Risk is quantified through measurement of the variance around your estimates. Some estimates associated with your PROJECT P&L will be relatively firm – with little standard deviation. Others, will have very large variance. The areas with high variance are the ones that are most likely to cause you to fail.

You can do this yourself – by simply estimating best case, worst case and best guess and using a spreadsheet to model that impact of the uncertainty inherent in your P&L on your odds of success.

Alternatively – you can use the TrailBlazer Innovation Project Software developed by the Eureka! Ranch team. It’s a collection of easy to use tools that help you quantify the risk associated with forecasting inputs. Your quantified inputs are then used to forecast sales, cost and profit using a state of the art “Market Simulation” system.  It allows you to do a “virtual introduction” of your innovation into the marketplace some 10,000 times. The PROJECT P&L report predicts five years of trial, repeat and diffusion of your innovation into the marketplace. It also models the uncertainty associated with your estimates of cost and profitability.

The first couple of PROJECT P&L assessments are done by the Ranch team working with your team. In time, your staff becomes trained to run them on all projects.

The bottom line result is nothing short of amazing.  You decrease your project risk AND build confidence among your stakeholders.


To learn more about how the Eureka! Ranch can help reach out to Maggie Nichols at Maggie@EurekaRanch.com