What stages does an internal innovator go through, from first pitch to approved innovation?
Most advice on winning support for a new idea is written for founders pitching investors, or for leaders driving change across a whole organisation. Neither describes the situation an internal innovator is actually in: one project, one budget holder, and a route through the organisation that has to be walked step by step.
Breaking Innovation Barriers maps that route. Gijs van Wulfen takes the hero's journey and rebuilds it for the person inside the company: "I have transformed the hero's journey to innovation, by converting it into a tailor-made outline for your story as innovator in twelve steps." The twelve steps are not metaphors. They are the moments that actually decide whether an innovation survives.
Four of them are the ones people recognise immediately. Step five, innovation tests, allies and enemies, where you make progress with the help of internal allies and against the opposition of stage-gate steering committees. Step six, the approach to the CFO, asking for financial approval to launch. Step seven, which the book calls business case hell on earth, the innovator's greatest challenge. Step eight, the launching customer reward, the moment a real customer commits. Step nine, the feasibility disasters, where cost price and technical obstacles arrive.
Naming those stages does two things. It tells you where you are, so a setback reads as a known stage rather than as failure. And it gives you the outline of the story to tell, because a decision maker who recognises the journey understands what you are asking for and why now.
This is strategy fifteen of fifteen, the one the book closes on: "A great story resonates. And that's why it gets you buy-in for change."