Why Most Good Ideas Die in the Boardroom

Editor’s note: This essay sits within Cultivated’s wider body of work on the cost between idea and value — the often-invisible gap where good ideas stall, not through lack of effort, but through poor translation, misaligned incentives, and unclear communication.

Why Most Good Ideas Die in the Boardroom

I was in Zurich — coffee in hand, Ricoh GR camera ready — sitting by the river on a bright summer’s day, recording cathedral bells as they echoed across the water.

The day before, I’d given a talk on value.

Not the abstract kind.
Not the “nice to have” kind.

The kind that makes executives stop scrolling, lean forward, and actually listen.

Because here’s the reality:

Most good ideas die in the boardroom.
Not because they’re bad — but because they’re told in the wrong language, in the wrong way.

This essay can also be explored in audio form. You’re welcome to listen — or continue reading below.

A Man With a Magnificent Moustache

Years ago, I worked with a technical manager.

Brilliant mind. Calm presence.
And a truly magnificent moustache — the kind that deserves its own social media account. The kind that entered the room 20 seconds before the rest of him.

He had real solutions. Evidence-based. Practical. Achievable.

But every time he presented them to senior leaders, he lost the room.

Why?

He spoke in technical language.
Pipelines. CI/CD. DevOps. Infrastructure patterns.

His peers understood immediately.
Executives didn’t.

Within minutes, phones appeared. Attention drifted. The idea quietly died.

He wasn’t wrong.
He just wasn’t speaking in terms of value.

The Four Value Questions That Change Everything

We sat down together and stripped the idea back to first principles.

Not what he wanted to build —
but why it mattered.

Over time, this became a simple but durable way of thinking about value — one that now sits at the heart of the Idea → Value system.

When you’re asking executives for support, funding, or permission, your idea must clearly create at least one of these four types of value.

1. Financial Value — keeps the business alive

(Something worth paying for + someone willing to pay)

This is the most obvious form of value — and the one leaders are trained to listen for.

Revenue.
Margin.
Growth.
Speed to market.

If your idea:

• unlocks new customers
• accelerates delivery of value
• increases pricing power
• expands the addressable market
• adds more intelligence to the product or service

say so — clearly, plainly, and without jargon.

No business survives without financial value.

2. Cost Reduction — keeps the business efficient

Waste is expensive.
Often invisibly so.

Rework.
Delays.
Handovers.
Poor quality.
Over-engineering.

If your idea:

• removes friction
• reduces risk
• prevents failure
• cuts recurring cost
• stops failure demand

make that visible.

Cost reduction is not unambitious — it is how many businesses fund the next wave of progress.

3. Enablement — keeps the business operating

Not all value is immediately financial.

Some work exists to:

• keep people effective
• keep systems running
• reduce dependency and fragility
• prevent single points of failure
• stay compliant and legal

This is enablement value.

Hiring.
Training.
Tooling.
Platform stability.
Succession planning.
Compliance.
Security.

These investments don’t always show instant ROI — but without them, nothing else works.

Good executives understand this.
Bad pitches ignore it.

4. Experiments — keeps the business learning

Some ideas are not about certainty.

They are about learning faster than competitors.

Experiments create value by:

• testing assumptions
• reducing future risk
• exploring opportunity at low cost
• informing better decisions later
• seeding the next big revenue generator

The key here is intent.

If something is an experiment:

• say so
• define what you want to learn
• define the cost of learning
• define what happens next

Learning is value — when it is deliberate.

The Shift That Changes Everything

The moustachioed manager went back in.

Same idea.
Same calm delivery.

But this time, he framed it explicitly as:

• cost reduction (less rework, fewer delays)
• enablement (a more stable platform)
• with a clear path to financial value (faster time to market)

Executives leaned in.
They asked questions.
He left with funding and support he’d been chasing for months.

Nothing magical happened.

The idea didn’t change.
The value framing did.

Why This Matters

You might not have a moustache.

But you almost certainly have ideas that matter — ideas that could:

• reduce waste
• enable better work
• test something worth learning
• or create real financial value

If you want those ideas to survive the boardroom, remember this:

Don’t drown people in jargon.
Don’t hope they “get it”.
Translate.

Which value does this create?
Financial?
Cost reduction?
Enablement?
Experimentation?

Because executives don’t buy ideas.

They buy value they can recognise, defend, and support

Photos from Zurich