At some point during an innovation project you ought to wake up in the middle of the night, eyes wide open, screaming into the void: "We're thinking of doing what?"
Although scary to you and your neighbors, this is a great moment. If you aren't waking up in the middle of the night, you might not be pushing hard enough. The trick is to embrace that fluttering feeling and to understand the situation. If you don't, you risk incrementalizing or even killing some really great ideas.
Usually, the business opportunity or experience is stretching "too far" along one or more six key dimensions of growth:
Users: needs, contexts, behaviors, mindsets, jobs, etc
Offerings: product/service, value proposition, pricing, positioning, channel, etc.
Positioning/GTM: how you go to market
Business Model/Culture: margin model and prioritization scheme
Process & Organization: how you get things done
Scope: the business you're in
Your brand, your management and your investors are the "anchors" that snap you right back to what you know you can do today. Business designers should be working with their teams to design novel approaches and strategies to navigate and maintain the right level of tension, balancing growth, opportunities and risk.
Some companies and organizations are capable of stretching more than others; they have higher innovation elasticity. Similarly, certain organizational and innovation governance strategies, like heavyweight teams, help provide slack in the system.
You shouldn't stretch just for the sake of stretching. Nor is it realistic or strategic to stretch infinitely in any direction. People that suggest as much, while often alluring, usually don't know what it takes to get things done. There ought to be some tension in the system. But understanding how nimble you are along each of these key dimensions can help you systematically foresee and deal with the hurdles over time.
