You have more ideas for new products than money to invest. what should you do?

Question

Options

• ARun proposals by market potentials (Unrealized ValuE. and fully fund as many as you can.
• BFund small experiments to test the proposed ideas and assumptions, then evaluate results.
• CInvest in the proposals that have the highest projected current value for the next year.
• DInvest in all of them, but at proportionally lowered amounts, and see how they all perform.

• A
  5% (3)
• B
  64% (42)
• C
  9% (6)
• D
  23% (15)

Explanation

Funding small experiments (option B) reflects the lean startup principle: when capital is scarce, you validate assumptions cheaply before committing fully, reducing the risk of pouring money into ideas that won't work in the real market.

• A is wrong because "market potentials" and unrealized value are estimates - fully funding proposals based on projections alone ignores untested assumptions and burns capital before you have evidence.
• C is wrong because projected current value for one year is too short-sighted and still relies on projections, not real-world validation.
• D is wrong because spreading limited funds thinly across all ideas often means none of them get enough resources to generate meaningful results - you end up with inconclusive data on everything.

Memory tip: Think "test before invest" - B is the only option that lets reality (not projections) guide your decisions, which is the core of modern product development frameworks like Lean and Agile.

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