From HBS Working Knowledge, I found the very interesting When Bad Ideas Won’t Die by Isabelle Royer (see also a Computerworld Q&A with Royer on this subject). Royer researched what surely is the dark side of innovation: Why companies can’t kill projects and products that are doomed to fail.

This concept is vastly important in creativity and innovation. As much as we talk about developing corporate environments for creativity and innovation where no criticism is allowed to snuff out promising, tender young ideas, there does need to be some point in the innovation process where some kind of reality testing is allowed to take place. If innovation is the fuel in your company’s growth engine, innovation gone bad can derail the whole train before it ever gets to the hill, much less up it.

Royer describes how “collective belief” can set in, as the project’s champion spreads the success gospel throughout the organization until “faith blinds you to increasingly negative feedback from the lab, from vendors and partners, from customers,” a phenomenon many in the tech world recognize as drinking the Koolaid.

The dangers: Problems won’t be seen as signs of failure, or even as issues that should be resolved before moving on to the next stage of development; misplaced enthusiasm can lead to an unrealistically tight development timetable; and lenient review procedures.

Some antidotes to collective belief: Don’t let teams self-select; include skeptics among the true believers on a team; replace team members with “fresh eyes” as development proceeds; and bring in an “exit champion” directly involved in the project to counteract the force of the project champion. And though Royer doesn’t say this, the presence of an exit champion can also free the project champion to give the effort his or her total creative devotion without having to worry about objectivity.

This exit champion needs to be fearless and determined to be objective, but also needs corporate support. Says Royer: “Just as companies celebrate and recount stories of the great successes of product champions, they could perhaps identify and spread tales of courageous exit champions who saved their organizations million of dollars.”

Please note that Royer specifically says that the exit champion isn’t a project-killer or a naysayer. He or she is simply charged with objectivity.

We can all think of projects that could (or could have) used an exit champion. In fact, we’ve got a great example in front of us right now: The war in Iraq. I don’t know much about war strategy, but it’s hard to believe there’s not something like an exit champion in Central Command offering an objective look at the various potential maneuvers and at the war as a whole. We’ll probably never see or hear this person, but I hope he or she exists.