Innovation Prioritisation
Innovation prioritisation ranks competing ideas by impact against effort, so scarce funding goes to the few ideas worth it instead of being spread thin across everything.
Each idea gets plotted on two axes, effort along one, impact along the other.
Reach for this when…
- Every idea on the list is called 'high priority' and none of them are moving.
- You are funding fifteen small projects instead of three good ones.
- Someone with the loudest voice, not the best idea, keeps getting resourced.
How to run it
- List every candidate idea in one place, no exceptions.
- Score each on likely impact and on effort or cost to deliver.
- Plot them: Quick Wins, Major Projects, Fill-ins, Thankless Tasks.
- Fund the Quick Wins first, they build momentum and evidence.
- Schedule the Major Projects deliberately, don't let them crowd out delivery.
A worked example
Situation. Amina Bennani ran Souk Fraich, an agritech cooperative platform for smallholder farmers in Casablanca, Morocco, with fourteen proposed features and a two-person development team.
Applied. She scored all fourteen on farmer impact against build effort. An SMS price-alert feature came out high impact, low effort. A full mobile app rebuild scored high impact but very high effort.
Result. The price alerts shipped in three weeks and farmer sign-ups doubled. The app rebuild moved to the roadmap for later, properly resourced instead of half-built alongside everything else.
The catch
Impact and effort are both estimates, not facts, and the matrix quietly launders guesses into numbers that look precise. It also rewards Quick Wins over harder, higher-value work that a Major Project might deliver. Revisit the plot regularly, an idea's effort score changes once you actually start.
If everything lands in the top right quadrant, your scoring criteria are too generous, not your ideas too good.