We know that innovation involves taking risks.

Yet it often seems that the safe option is to turn down the risk.  However, turning down a risk is also a risk – the risk of losing an opportunity. Just to remind us of how big that risk is, here is a list of some of the worst decisions in business history.  Many involve rejecting opportunities that turned out to be huge commercial successes.

They include Decca Records turning down the Beatles, Western Union rejecting the telephone, Mars confectionery missing out on ET, Henry Ford refusing to change the Model T and Digital Research missing the opportunity to provide the operating system for the IBM PC. Among the comments on the article it is noted that several publishers turned down J K Rowling when she submitted the script for the first Harry Potter novel.  In its early days Google offered its search technology to other companies but no-one was prepared to pay $1m for it! It is very easy for us with hindsight to scoff at the business leaders who made these decisions but I am sure that the choices seemed rational at the time.

Of course most bands are not the Beatles and many have to be rejected. But it is easy to become too critical too soon. How many of the ideas and proposals that we have rejected were missed opportunities?  When we look at the costs of a risky venture we need to factor in the cost of missing the opportunity too.  Don’t just ask – what could possibly go wrong here?  Ask – what would happen if we missed this?