It’s a worst-case scenario for scientists, whether in university research labs or corporate R&D: toiling on a project for years only to discover that the early-stage idea didn’t pan out. It happens, but why?
The answer may lie in how much project evaluators considered the feasibility of the idea at the outset, according to an analysis of research grants by Harvard Business School’s Jacqueline Ng Lane and collaborators from across Harvard University. When grant evaluators focus solely on whether projects are doable, they detect more flaws and rate them as less achievable—by as much as 10 percentage points—than when they weigh other factors as well, the findings show.
When execution matters—whether in translational medicine, product development, or startup scaling—feasibility deserves focused scrutiny.
From universities to businesses, decision-makers who underestimate feasibility risk letting their excitement about bold ideas cloud their judgment, even as research and development investments cost billions and failed projects threaten to undermine organizations, say Lane and coauthors Simon Friis, postdoctoral fellow at the Laboratory for Innovation Science (LISH) at the Digital Data Design Institute at Harvard; Michael Menietti, LISH senior research scientist; Griffin Weber and Tianxi Cai, professors at Harvard Medical School; and Eva C. Guinan, faculty lead of pilot funding at Harvard Catalyst and a research director at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.
Lane emphasizes that this finding is particularly crucial for translational medicine—the process of moving scientific discoveries from laboratories to patient care. Unlike basic research, which prioritizes novelty, translational research focuses on whether promising ideas can work in clinical practice. Creating real innovations that help patients—such as mRNA vaccines, CAR-T cell therapies, CRISPR treatments, and monoclonal antibodies—requires not only novel ideas but also rigorous attention to whether they can be manufactured, administered safely, and scaled.
“When execution matters—whether in translational medicine, product development, or startup scaling—feasibility deserves focused scrutiny,” says Lane, whose working paper “Greenlighting Innovative Projects: How Evaluation Structure Shapes the Perceived Feasibility of Early Stage Ideas” was updated in October. “This applies anywhere the goal is creating something that actually works rather than generating new knowledge.”
Yet in academia, prioritizing feasibility goes against traditional evaluation formats, like those conducted for National Institutes of Health grants, which tend to weigh the potential novelty, impact, and viability of early-stage research projects equally. The reason: Many believe that true innovation comes from thinking big and that narrowly focusing on safe outcomes is bound to stifle creativity.
Lane says early reality checks that determine if a proposed project is realistic can help head off costly failures in the long run. While evaluators shouldn’t ignore a unique idea with potentially strong impact, emphasizing viability could lead to more efficient use of resources and better outcomes, especially at a time when government research funding remains uncertain.
“The evaluation process is critical to allocating limited resources,” Lane says. “You want to have a better idea beforehand about all the potential risks and barriers involved.”
Field testing $500,000 in research grants
The genesis of the study came from frustrated Harvard Medical School leaders who wanted to promote innovative early-stage projects while understanding which stood a realistic chance of producing positive results. Lane and the other researchers decided to jointly test how the grant evaluation format identifies issues related to the feasibility, novelty, and impact of a proposed project.
The researchers reviewed $500,000 in grant proposals via the Harvard Catalyst program, which supports research in clinical and translational sciences. Conducted during a one-month period in 2021, the grant review process involved 97 evaluators assessing 47 research proposals. The evaluators awarded $50,000 to each of the top 10 proposals.
Researchers randomly divided evaluators into two groups based on whether they considered only feasibility constraints, such as budget, scope, time, and regulatory limitations; or assigned equal weight to feasibility, as well as novelty and impact. The researchers analyzed evaluation scores and evaluators’ comments on proposals.
The advantages of focusing on feasibility
The authors found that:
Focusing on feasibility alone reveals more flaws. The feasibility-only evaluators were considerably tougher graders than their multi-criteria counterparts, assigning feasibility scores that were 6 to 10 percentage points lower than those assigned by multivariable evaluators.
Evaluation criteria shape funding decisions. The two groups had vastly different ideas about which projects should receive funding, resulting in a 70% difference in the evaluators’ top 10 proposals.
Why does zeroing in on feasibility reveal more potential risks?
In an analysis of evaluators’ comments using both human reviewers and artificial intelligence, the authors found that the feasibility-only reviewers considered 26% more sub-criteria than the other evaluators. These evaluators probed more deeply into potential critical flaws while also spending more time exposing key inconsistencies in research proposals.
Our study shows that focusing more on feasibility picks up things you wouldn’t normally see.
Evaluators in the multi-criteria group may have let enthusiasm for a novel project’s promise and potential impact overshadow whether it was feasible, the researchers say. The approach also forces evaluators to divide their attention across broad categories, making them more likely to approve less feasible high-risk projects.
“Our study shows that focusing more on feasibility picks up things you wouldn’t normally see,” Lane explains. “More scrutiny during an evaluation process can identify barriers and inconsistencies that may doom a project from the outset.”
A process for weighing big ideas
The authors aren’t suggesting that evaluators jettison originality and promise altogether, but organizations might have more success with new ideas if they:
Prioritize feasibility
Alongside weighing other factors, scrutinizing whether a project’s implementation is realistic by doing a deep dive into its experimental design, timeline, regulatory requirements, and other feasibility factors can reveal more risks earlier and might prevent high-stakes failure later.
Make novelty and impact secondary considerations
Weighing these two big-picture categories at the same time as feasibility increases cognitive load and complicates evaluation, so novelty and impact should be considered after assessing a project’s feasibility.
Re-evaluate decision rubrics
Multi-criteria evaluations are unlikely to rein in exuberance or reveal key weaknesses. It’s better to craft a more sequential evaluation process that gives decision-makers the full picture of a big idea.
“Exploring the novelty and the potential positive impacts of early-stage innovative projects is [still] key,” Lane explains. “If you're only looking at feasibility and you're only looking for flaws in proposals, you might actually screen out truly innovative projects.”
Image created with asset from Unsplash/Getty Images.
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Greenlighting Innovative Projects: How Evaluation Structure Shapes the Perceived Feasibility of Early-Stage Ideas
Lane, Jacqueline N., Simon Friis, Tianxi Cai, Michael Menietti, Griffin Weber, and Eva C. Guinan. "Greenlighting Innovative Projects: How Evaluation Structure Shapes the Perceived Feasibility of Early-Stage Ideas." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 24-064, March 2024. (Revised October 2025.)
