2025
Working Paper
HBS Working Paper Series

Greenlighting Innovative Projects: How Evaluation Format Shapes the Perceived Feasibility of Early-Stage Ideas

By: Jacqueline N. Lane, Simon Friis, Tianxi Cai, Michael Menietti, Griffin Weber and Eva C. Guinan

Format:Print
| Language:English
| Pages:43

Abstract

The evaluation of innovative early-stage projects is essential for allocating limited resources. We investigate how the evaluation format affects the identification of feasibility issues through a field experiment at a leading research university. Experts were randomly assigned to multicriteria (impact, novelty, feasibility) or single-criterion (feasibility-only) reviews of grant proposals. Feasibility-only reviews yielded lower scores, and substantial reordering of proposal rankings compared to multi-criteria evaluators. Analysis of qualitative comments reveals two mechanisms: focused attention enables discovery of critical flaws in feasibility components, while coherence scrutiny facilitates integrated assessment, exposing inconsistencies across components. Tracking subsequent publications shows that feasibility-only evaluations better predict research productivity than multi-criteria evaluations. These findings suggest value in combining approaches—using feasibility-only reviews to surface critical implementation barriers while leveraging multi-criteria processes to capture interdependencies, ensuring high-potential projects receive both a thorough feasibility and holistic evaluation.

Keywords

Innovation Evaluation; Evaluation Criteria; Feasibility Assessment; Attention Allocation; Cognitive Mechanisms; Field Experiment; Research; Performance Evaluation; Innovation and Invention; Prejudice and Bias

Citation

Lane, Jacqueline N., Simon Friis, Tianxi Cai, Michael Menietti, Griffin Weber, and Eva C. Guinan. "Greenlighting Innovative Projects: How Evaluation Format Shapes the Perceived Feasibility of Early-Stage Ideas." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 24-064, March 2024. (Revised May 2025.)