Two words that often kill great ideas: “prove it”

When it comes to healthcare marketing, one of the most feared comments from executives, physicians and operational leaders is this: “If you can’t prove this will work, then we’re not doing it.”

As we’ve stated many times over the past year in our blog posts, podcasts, and paper, we feel passionately that marketers should strive to measure the success of their efforts whenever possible. Measurement allows you to demonstrate marketing’s value to leadership, and, more importantly, to better understand what works and what doesn’t. That kind of measurement discipline can help marketers answer that dreaded question by allowing them to pull from past experiences and demonstrate that yes, this can work, and this is how it has in the past.

Except in one case: when the idea is brand new and hasn’t been done before, either by you and your organization, or, even worse, by anybody else. Of course, launching a new idea before anyone else can lead to great success (iPod, TiVo, Starbuck’s “third place” experience, etc.) But in a conservative culture, the lack of a proven track record is often what kills an innovative idea. An article in this week’s BusinessWeek titled “Innovation’s Accidental Enemies” does a great job of reminding us why the lack of a proven track record should be considered an opportunity, not a deficit.

It starts with a story of a bank CEO presented with a new approach to finding and landing high-end customers. The CEO asks “Have any other big banks done this?” and the consultant answers, excitedly, “No, you’ll be the first!” Of course, that leads the CEO to kill the idea on the spot. (insert rimshot here) The authors then go on to provide a different type of thinking that can help organizations keep an open mind to opportunity called abductive thinking. Instead of using inductive or deductive thinking – both of which rely on existing information to make conclusions – abductive thinking is the “logic of what could be.” Quoting the authors of the article:

“Asking what could be true – and jumping into the unknown – is critical to innovation.”

So as you work on your marketing plan for 2010, have you left room for innovative ideas? Are you considering trying something that you’ve never tried before, or better yet, what no one has ever tried before? Learning how to use abductive reasoning might help you respond to the inevitable challenge of “prove it.”