An ongoing frustration of innovation projects is the apparently always moving goalposts. How often have you heard “wish marketing would make up their minds what they want”
This desire to have the end point articulated at the commencement is natural, it enables good milestone and resource management, feedback and accountability systems, all beloved of the bean counters. However, if the requirements of a marketplace are evolving quicker than the projects can be brought to the market, leaving the goalposts untouched is the same as ensuring you bring a redundant project to completion, not much value there.
The challenge is to know if marketing is just a bunch of seat shiners who cannot make up their minds, or a group so intimately connected to the market that they see the evolution as it happens. Sometimes it is pretty hard to tell the difference. Therefore, the only way to ensure the development groups are connected to the market, via marketing or otherwise, is to and hold them to a level of personal and development group responsibility for the outcomes.
