How to backtrack an Innovation Opportunity in the Next Cycle

Innovation is rarely linear. If an experiment shows that an earlier assumption was wrong, you can move the opportunity back to an earlier step or stage.

Steps

1. Open the opportunity. In the Leader sidebar, click Innovation Opportunities and click its name.
2. In the Next Cycle bar, find the step you want to go back to:
   • Previous step in the same stage: click the segment just before the highlighted one.
   • Step in an earlier stage: click that stage's step segment. Stages marked Done still show their segments.
   • Start of an earlier stage: click the stage name. The opportunity moves to the first step of that stage.
3. The change is saved right away. You see "Opportunity was successfully updated." The stages after the new position no longer show Done.

Tips

• There is no separate Back button or confirmation window today. Clicking the bar applies the change immediately.
• Going back does not delete hypotheses, small bets, spendings or resources. Existing hypotheses keep their stage. New hypotheses are tagged with the new current stage.
• If you want to keep a hypothesis under a different stage, open it and change Select the current Next Cycle Stage for this assumption.

Related articles

• Next Cycle overview
• Move an Innovation Opportunity through the Next Cycle
• Navigating the Next Cycle's stages, step by step
• Hypotheses overview