Innovation
Assessment

Planning & Organization Tools

A two-part tool for evaluating business ideas and developing
an innovative thinking practice.

Separating Generation from Evaluation

The word "innovation" gets used in two very different ways in business: as a vague aspiration ("we need to be more innovative") and as a concrete question ("is this idea actually viable?"). This tool works on both levels. The first part gives you a structured way to evaluate a specific idea. The second part develops the discipline of generating and pressure-testing new thinking.

The Desirability-Feasibility-Viability framework is useful because it forces you to assess an idea across three dimensions simultaneously. Most ideas fail on one of three grounds: clients don't want it, you can't build or deliver it at scale, or the economics don't work. Mapping these three together makes visible which one is constraining your idea - and where it is genuinely strong.

The second part of this tool shifts from assessment to generation. The three-step exercise asks you to name new possibilities before testing them - deliberately separating the creative phase from the analytical one. Most leaders collapse those two phases, which means they analyze ideas to death before they have had a chance to develop.

How to Use This Assessment

Name a specific idea for Part 1. Not a category of ideas - a single, specific product, service, or initiative you are considering. The more concrete you are, the more useful the assessment will be.
Complete all three cells honestly. Write what is actually true about desirability, feasibility, and viability - not what you hope is true. The insight comes from seeing where the gaps are.
For Part 2, generate before you judge. Step 1 asks you to name three new products or services. Write them down without filtering.
Step 2 asks you to pitch one idea as genuinely different. The constraint is: not "how would we offer this" but "how would we offer this in a way the market hasn't seen."
Step 3 applies the same pressure to something you already do. Be specific about what "best on the market" would actually mean.

Part 1: Innovation Assessment

Client:

Date:

Desir-
ability

Feasi-
bility

Viabi-
lity

INNO-
VATION

Desirability - Do clients actually want this?

Feasibility - Can you build and deliver it at scale?

Viability - Do the economics work?

Idea Being Assessed

Desirability

Do clients want this? What evidence do you have?

Feasibility

Can you build and deliver this? At what scale?

Viability

Do the economics work? What does the margin look like?

Part 2: Innovative Thinking

Step 1 - Expand the Offering

Think of 3 new products or services your business does not currently offer. Generate first, evaluate later - write them without filtering.

1.

2.

3.

Step 2 - Differentiate

Choose one idea from Step 1. How would you pitch it as something genuinely different from what already exists in the market?

Step 3 - Improve What Exists

Choose one existing product or service. What would it take to make it the strongest offering in your market? What specifically would need to change?

Before Your Next Session

Looking at the assessment: which dimension - desirability, feasibility, or viability - was hardest to populate honestly? What does that tell you?
From Part 2: which of the three new ideas has the most potential, and what is the one thing that would need to be true for it to be viable?
If you were to move forward on any idea from this tool, what is the smallest version of it you could test in 90 days?

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