In innovation work, “What would happen if we don’t do this?” is one of the most powerful clarifying questions you can ask. It forces a shift from solution‑brain to consequence‑brain, which is where real prioritization lives.
If nothing meaningfully degrades when the initiative is skipped, the initiative is likely:
- a convenience
- a “nice to have”
- or an idea untethered from an urgent business outcome
You expose negative space:
- operational risk
- regulatory risk
- reputational risk
- customer trust erosion
- accumulation of manual work
- future technical debt
Skipping an innovation initiative often has delayed impacts:
- slower time-to-market
- loss of differentiation
- inability to scale processes
- reduced adaptability to regulatory change
What compounds if we do nothing?
- performance drag
- manual effort growth
- preventable incidents
- rework multipliers
- dependency blocks
If stakeholders can’t articulate meaningful consequences of not doing the work, they don’t actually believe in it.
(Framed as you would use it in a cross-functional room)
- “If we do nothing for 90 days, what breaks first?”
- “What new costs emerge if we defer this a quarter or a year?”
- “What risks become unacceptable thresholds?”
- “What becomes impossible later if we don’t invest now?”
- “Whose job gets harder, and by how much?”
You’re not looking for fear-based answers—you’re looking for evidence of real stakes.
Because innovation is almost always:
- under-resourced
- competing with regulatory commitments
- challenged by ambiguous ROI
This question exposes:
- false urgency
- genuine urgency
- missing business cases
- unspoken constraints
- latent dependencies
It separates “important” from “interesting.”