Hack:
Channeling the Inner VC

Amazed at the huge number of great ideas going nowhere in your organization?  Getting that first hunk of change to prove an idea (maybe just $10,000) can be a big challenge for a creative thinker stuck in a corner of the org chart.  Get the guys with the budgets to get in the process by making them venture capitalists inside your organization.

This starts at the top, with a CEO who expects his/her direct reports to find and fund sprouting ideas inside the organization.  Senior leaders begin to compete to see who is the visionary who has funded the ideas that develop into winners.  As it is in professional sports, the best recruiters learn to recognize the good ones early, and the creative people in the organization begin to realize to whom they should go when they have a great idea.

The result is more ideas with legs; a byproduct is a better connection between the thinkers and the senior leaders in the organization.