The document outlines various organizational roadblocks that can hinder innovation efforts. It identifies issues such as short-term priorities taking precedence over long-term innovation, a lack of leadership support for innovation, risk-averse policies that dismiss ideas prematurely, an absence of processes and vision for managing innovation, overreliance on inaccurate validation tools, and fear of failure discouraging risk-taking. The document also lists project-specific roadblocks like an inability to select the best ideas from many options, indecision delaying progress, and a lack of clarity around objectives.

2. Your long-term innovation
efforts lose valuable resources
and attention when short-term
priorities flare up.
Short-Term
PrioritiesWin
Organization Roadblock

3. Leadership does not visibly
support innovation. By failing to
“walk the talk,” employees doubt
leadership’s commitment
to innovation.
Lip-Service
Leadership
Organization Roadblock

4. The financial, legal and HR
hurdles put in place to mitigate
risk end up prematurely
dismissing promising ideas.
Org-Wide
RiskAversion
Organization Roadblock

5. Your organization lacks a
common vision for innovation
and the essential processes and
methods for how to manage
innovation from idea to market.
NoInnovation
Vision,Process
Organization Roadblock

6. Your organization is overly
dependent on quant-driven
validation tools that provide
inaccurate projections
of in-market success.
Over-Reliance
onQuant
Organization Roadblock

7. The organization insists on
overly detailed business plans
for unproven ideas, which does
little more than provide false
confidence and shift thinking
to execution prematurely.
Premature
BusinessPlans
Organization Roadblock

8. Despite your leaders espousing
the value of “failing fast,” many
people in your organization
resist being personally
associated with failures.
Fearof
PersonalFailure
Organization Roadblock

9. Whether overtly, or covertly,
members of your core business
doubt the value of innovation at
your organization.
Innovation
Skeptics
Organization Roadblock

10. Your organization and
leaders are not motivated
or incentivized to make the
changes and investments
needed for innovation
to succeed.
Organization
LacksUrgency
Organization Roadblock

11. Your project requires teams to
work together like never before.
There is a lack of trust and
communication between
individuals, teams and leaders.
SilosCreate
Distrust
Organization Roadblock

12. Your organization lacks
commonly agreed-upon metrics
and a system for tracking
and reporting the ROI of
innovation efforts.
NoTrackingof
Innovation’sROI
Organization Roadblock

13. Your ideas are held to the same
revenue and margin standards as
the core business, which snuffs
out promising opportunity areas
before progress is made.
Unrealistic
RevenueHurdles
Organization Roadblock

14. Your organization and teams are
unable to attract or retain the
mindsets and hard skills required
to drive ideas to market.
Attracting&
RetainingTalent
Organization Roadblock

15. Leaders and key players are
incentivized to keep the status
quo and minimize risk to the
detriment of innovation efforts.
Misaligned
Incentives
Organization Roadblock

16. Your organization lacks a process
for terminating failing projects,
which leads to misallocated,
wasted resources.
LingeringProjects
MisuseResources
Organization Roadblock

17. Your organization lacks a
system to gather and advance
promising ideas from across
the organization.
NoOrg-Wide
IdeaGathering
Organization Roadblock

18. Your organization lacks
oversight or management of
the total organizationv-wide
innovation
portfolio and pipeline.
NoEnterprise
InnovationPortfolio
Organization Roadblock

19. Your organization lacks any
centralized system to identify
and take action against emerging
trends and challengers that may
threaten the core business.
NoEarlyThreat
DetectionSystem
Organization Roadblock

20. Your portfolio of ideas demands
execution capabilities that the
organization doesn’t possess.
You’re unable to convince
leadership to make investments.
RequiresNew
ExecutionMuscle
Project Roadblock

21. Your ideation process produces
dozens, even hundreds of ideas,
but fails to deliver clear-cut
winners, creating indecision.
ManyGoodIdeas,
NoGreatOnes
Project Roadblock

22. When faced with uncertainty,
teams fail to make a decision
and take action, leaving ideas
to languish in innovation
purgatory.
Indecision
&Inaction
Project Roadblock

23. Teams are not empowered
to make decisions, therefore
progress is slowed and
ultimately indecision and
inaction sets in.
Slow
Decisions
Project Roadblock

24. Despite your best attempts,
you and your stakeholders fail
to clarify project objectives and
timing, which leads to a misuse
of resources and inaction.
Unclear
Objectives
Project Roadblock

25. You find your team becoming
fixated on generating novel
ideas without any regard for
execution. Big ideas are
entertained and discussed,
but rarely acted upon.
IdeaObsessed,
ExecutionAllergic
Project Roadblock

26. Your idea testing is inadequate,
inefficient and inconclusive.
Your team is left questioning
whether to pivot or persevere.
Inconclusive
Testing
Project Roadblock

27. Your team builds polished
“vanity” prototypes for the
sake of impressing leaders
rather than testing and
(in)validating assumptions.
Prototypingfor
Polish,NotLearning
Project Roadblock

28. The lack of a proven method
for prioritizing ideas with
confidence leaves your team
spreading their resources thin
and/or doubting their selections.
Poor
Prioritization
Project Roadblock

29. Your team is generating
desirable and feasible ideas,
but in opportunity areas that
the core business would deem
small and not worth the effort.
TooLittle
Opportunity
Project Roadblock

30. The organization mistakenly
treats core innovation and
transformational innovation
efforts with the same approach,
metrics, teams and expectations.
One-Size-Fits-
NoneApproach
Project Roadblock

31. Your exploratory research
results in stale insights that
fail to make new connections
or inspire fresh ideas.
Inactionable
Insights
Project Roadblock

32. Your team fails to uncover or
have access to underutilized
assets (e.g., distribution, IP
partnerships), which could serve
as key enablers for big ideas.
Overlooked
Assets
Project Roadblock

33. The inflexible, linear process
so many big companies prefer
doesn’t allow your project team
to respond to new learnings and
adjust their approach on the fly.
Rigid
Process
Project Roadblock

34. Attempting to keep momentum,
you allow tough questions to go
unasked and unanswered.
You trust your assumptions are
valid, which only delays and
amplifies the eventual pain.
Untested
Assumptions
Project Roadblock

35. Your key players don’t have
the time to devote to innovation
initiatives, causing the team to
lose valuable momentum.
Time-Starved
TeamMembers
Project Roadblock

36. Your team agrees you
must “take risks,” but you
have difficulty distinguishing
calculated, informed risk
from bad risk.
ParsingGood
RiskfromBad
Project Roadblock

37. Your team is misusing
startup mindsets and methods
for the type of challenge and
context of your business.
Misplaced
StartupEnvy
Project Roadblock

38. You and your team find
yourselves spending time
on elaborate, unproductive
workshops that take you
away from getting the
“real” work done.
OverlyFocusedon
InnovationTheatre
Project Roadblock

39. Your innovation resources are
stretched thin and you’re feeling
pressure to deliver in-market wins.
Therefore, you opt for safe ideas
that are likely to succeed, but yield
only small returns.
PlayItSafefor
QuickWins
Project Roadblock

40. Your team is aware of the
emerging trends influencing
your consumers and category.
Initially, leaders believe the space
is immature. By the time they’re
convinced, it’s too late.
TooEarly,
ThenTooLate
Project Roadblock

41. While compelling, your idea
has no clear home in the
organization, and will likely
languish unless a home is
located or created.
NoHomeinthe
Organization
Idea Roadblock

42. Your idea has no clear
routeto market based on the
company’s existing capabilities
and distribution.
NoRoute
toMarket
Idea Roadblock

43. Eager to build ideas, your
team overlooks identifying
and validating a clear consumer
need. In the end, you create
novel propositions that few
consumers want or need.
NoProblem/
SolutionFit
Idea Roadblock

44. Your organization has no clear
competitive advantage or
obvious right to win in your
proposed opportunity area.
NoClear
RighttoWin
Idea Roadblock

45. The anticipated risk and
investment required to pursue
your proposed idea outweigh
the estimated size of prize.
Risk/Reward
Imbalance
Idea Roadblock

46. Your proposed idea is
compelling, but is difficult
and expensive to scale based
on existing capabilities.
Difficult
toScale
Idea Roadblock

47. Brand
Misfit
Your proposed idea doesn’t
fit with any of the organization’s
existing brands—and leadership
is unwilling to invest in
creating a new brand.
Idea Roadblock

48. Your proposed idea is heavily
contingent on collaborating
with an external partner, which
your organization resists.
Dependenton
ExternalPartners
Idea Roadblock

49. While full of potential,
your idea requires too much
capital expenditure to
develop, scale and sustain.
TooMuchCap
ExRequired
Idea Roadblock

50. Your leaders elect not to fund
an idea that is unable to be
commercialized by the existing
capabilities—even though it
has been proven desirable to
consumers and presents a large
commercial opportunity.
Big,Desired,
butUndoable
Idea Roadblock

51. LPK’sRoadblocksis
atooltohelpyouand
yourteamanticipate
projectpitfallsand
overcomeorganizational
barriersonyourpath
toinnovationfortune
andglory.
After 30+ years, and hundreds of
projects in a dozen categories, LPK
has curated the most frequent
roadblocks to innovation.
Roadblocks isn’t a how-to guide—
it’s a tool inspiring teams to rapidly
identify, discuss and solve their
leading causes of innovation failure.
Use this deck to gain new
perspective, inspire your team,
overcome indecision and
accelerate to outcomes.
Roadblocks Intro