MIT Sloan Management Review Article on Better Ways to Green-Light New Projects
- 13m
- Ammon Salter, Linus Dahlander, Paola Criscuolo, Thorsten Grohsjean
- MIT Sloan Management Review
- 2021
In early 1962, an unknown band from Liverpool auditioned for Decca Records. The label rejected the band, saying, “We don’t like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out.” About 18 months later, the Beatles would release their first album.1 The rest is history.
The business world is full of anecdotes about businesses that passed on an idea that later became a huge success. The reverse is also true; in some cases, companies invest in promising ideas that prove disastrous. A famous example is Iridium Communications, a former division of Motorola that sought to market satellite phones broadly. After the company sent satellites into orbit in 1998, a host of issues prevented the business from gaining traction with customers, and the company filed for bankruptcy the next year. (Iridium was restructured and is still around; its technology is used by the U.S. military.)
About the Author
Thorsten Grohsjean (@grohsjean) is an assistant professor at Bocconi University in Milan.
Linus Dahlander (@linusdahlander) is a professor at ESMT Berlin.
Ammon Salter is a professor at the University of Bath.
Paola Criscuolo is a professor at Imperial College London.
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MIT Sloan Management Review Article on Better Ways to Green-Light New Projects
