Client engagements

Building a new-business engine for a global innovation lab

Delivered 2022 to 2024, as Managing Director and Partner at a prior advisory firm.

At year end I pitched the lab a different way to run the whole machine: stop treating innovation as a series of projects and run it as a standing engine. That pitch outlived the engagement.

The client

The corporate innovation lab of a global consumer-products group. Its job was to build new growth businesses in Asia, not to write reports about them. It ran a staged pipeline, from raw idea through conviction, test, and first launch. On paper the machine was sound. In practice the front of it leaked.

The engagement began as a narrow benchmarking question and grew into the operating method the lab ran its pipeline on.

THE EVIDENCE MACHINE 01 Market signal in Commercial databases, a curated source list, and a structured read of where the category is moving. 02 A portfolio of concepts Grounded in signal rather than taste, and shaped so a gate review can take them seriously. Killed early Weak ideas leave before they cost a test cycle. 03 Carried into conviction Tested against real market evidence, not internal enthusiasm. Not selected Held in the portfolio, not advanced. 04 An argued advance or kill Scored the same way, reason written down. Killed at the gate An argued decision, not a mood, with the reason on the record. Ideas enter on market signal, not taste. Every advance and every kill is an argued decision with a written reason. Exhibit | TeakCharge

The problem

Ideas arrived faster than evidence. A concept a senior sponsor liked could reach a gate review months later and die for a reason never tested at the start. That is an expensive way to learn. The lab wanted two things it did not yet have: a supply of ideas grounded in real market signal rather than taste, and a disciplined way to kill the weak ones before they consumed a test cycle.

The test

The lane the lab handed over was deliberately outside its core. That was the point. If the method only works where the client already has instincts, it is not a method. The engagement was a trial of whether disciplined discovery and evidence could hold up on ground neither side knew well.

What I built and ran

I rebuilt the front of the pipeline as an evidence machine. Discovery started from market signal rather than taste: commercial databases, a curated source list, and a structured read of where the category was actually moving, worked into a portfolio of concepts a gate review could take seriously.

From that portfolio, two concepts earned the conviction to be tested, and were put against real market evidence rather than internal enthusiasm, with a scorecard and gate structure that made every advance or kill an argued decision rather than a mood.

The year-end move

The most consequential deliverable was not a concept. The year-end pitch proposed running the pipeline as a standing engine, with defined stages, gates, governance, and a talent model, and it outlived the engagement.

What this shows

Two things. The method travels: disciplined discovery and evidence held up in a lane neither the client nor I had home advantage in. And good process work compounds: an engagement that started as a narrow benchmarking question ended with the blueprint for a standing new-business engine.

One of a set of engagement and systems case studies. If a problem like this is on your desk, start with a conversation.