Business Core · Innovation · Module

Pipeline and gates

The stages an idea passes through, the gates between them, and the criteria each must meet — agreed before the gate, including what would stop it.

The idea

How it works

Cooper’s stage-gate model separates new-product work into stages and places a decision between each. Its contribution lies less in the stages than in the gates: points where a project is weighed against agreed criteria and against the other projects wanting the same money, and where stopping is a normal outcome.

Three neighbours sit close. Growth horizons in the Goal Core decides how much effort goes to each horizon; this pipeline is what that allocation is spent on. Milestones covers checkpoints inside any piece of work, and Project management runs a funded stage once it is a project. What stays here is the portfolio of innovation bets and the criteria that decide which move forward.

Working with it

In practice

  1. 01

    Keep the stages few

    Three to five stages suit most organisations. Each extra gate adds delay without always adding information.

  2. 02

    Write kill criteria for each gate

    What result, cost or delay would end the project, stated before the gate. Without them, every gate becomes a request for more time.

  3. 03

    Decide against the portfolio

    A project is judged against the others competing for the same people and money, not against its own plan alone.

  4. 04

    Separate gatekeepers from sponsors

    A sponsor who also decides at the gate is judging their own case.

One level in

The components of pipeline and gates

A component is something that exists afterwards which did not exist before — a deliverable or a mechanism, not an intention.

  1. Stage map

    The stages every idea passes through, what each is meant to establish, and what it hands to the next.

    Learn

  2. Gate criteria

    The must-meet and kill criteria for each gate, written before any project reaches it.

    Learn

  3. Pipeline register

    Every live bet, its stage, its sponsor and what it currently holds in people and money.

    Learn

  4. Gate decision record

    What was decided at each gate, on what evidence, and with which conditions attached.

    Learn

Count the kills. A pipeline where every project passes every gate has stages but no gates.

The other modules in innovation

Sources of ideas

Where new ideas come from and how they reach someone who can act on them. Making the routes deliberate does more than asking for more ideas.

Learn

Experiments

Breaking an idea into the assumptions it rests on and testing the riskiest one first, with the smallest test that could change the decision.

Learn

Scaling or stopping

The two ends of the route: moving a proven pilot into ordinary operation, or ending a project cleanly and releasing what it held.

Learn
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