Corporate innovation projects stuck in pilots but never generating revenue? 

Here’s why 👇

I help corporate innovation and business development teams turn new products and services into real, scalable revenue, before momentum is lost.

At BW Ventures, we work with enterprise organisations (1,000+ FTE) to validate demand, design go-to-market strategies, and accelerate growth.

Most corporate innovation teams struggle with:

- Building solutions before validating real customer demand
- Strong pilots that never scale commercially
- Slow, unclear go-to-market execution
- Innovation teams disconnected from revenue ownership
- Missed growth opportunities due to internal complexity

Our work is structured around three growth levers:

1️⃣ Pre-Acceleration
Validate demand and secure early customers before heavy investment.

2️⃣ Go-To-Market Execution
Design and launch enterprise-ready GTM strategies for new products and services.

3️⃣ Strategic M&A (Growth Acceleration)
Acquire or partner to scale new business lines faster.

(Most clients start with Pre-Acceleration & GTM.)

Over the last few years, we’ve:

- Supported multiple corporate teams in launching new revenue streams
- Reduced time-to-market for enterprise innovations
- Helped innovation teams move from experimentation to commercial traction


👉 DM me “INNOVATION” if you’re responsible for turning new ideas into revenue and want to validate your next move before scaling.

Maarten Kroonenburg

Most innovation teams aren't testing ideas. 

And it’s exactly why they don’t grow. 

And look, I get it. 

You can have the best idea in the world. 

But in practice, it usually turns into: 

- Roadmaps that feel solid (without market proof) 
- Business cases built on assumptions 
- Steering committees approving vibes 
- Internal alignment instead of customer truth 

It looks professional. 

But none of it proves that a customer will ever pay. 

And that’s exactly why most initiatives die before revenue. 

The top 1% do something different.

They disqualify bad ideas early:

→ Dozens of actual customer conversations 
→ Pricing tests before building anything 
→ Kill criteria defined upfront 
→ Assumptions written down and then attacked 

Roadmaps by themselves don’t reduce risk. 

Nor do business cases make people buy. 

Only customers do. 

The fastest way to accelerate isn't speed. 

It’s using money wisely when you don’t yet have answers.

Maarten van Kroonenburg

I help corporate innovation leaders turn new products into revenue | Pre-Acceleration & Go-To-Market for enterprises

Almost all new corporate ventures could make money. 

If they just knew how to validate. 

The biggest mistake most business developers and innovation managers make isn't having a bad idea. 

It's spending 6 months building something nobody wants.

Then wondering why revenue never shows up.

I've seen it dozens of times: 

- Smart people 
- Solid execution 
- But absolutely zero customers 

All because they never validated the willingness to pay before launch. 

So I built something different. 

Not another guide or a framework you'll never use. 

A Revenue Readiness Diagnostic. 

It’s a structured assessment that exposes the gaps between what you believe and what you’ve actually validated. 

Here's how it works: 

→ You answer a short series of scored questions 
→ Questions force brutal honesty about your evidence 
→ You get a clear score showing where you actually stand 
→ The system identifies your biggest risk gaps 
→ You receive a prioritised validation plan Instant insights

It's clear roadmap showing what must be proven before revenue.

This will save you months of pain. 

Want the diagnostic? 

1. Connect with me 
2. Comment "READY" 

And I'll send it straight to your DMs.

Most people think Go-To-Market is a launch event. 

It's not. 

GTM isn't a date on your roadmap or a campaign you run once. 

Nor should it be. 

Here's what it actually is: 

→ Repetition: Does your motion work the 100th time?
→ Objections: Every "no" tells you what's broken in your model 
→ Unit economics: Can you acquire and retain customers profitably? 

The biggest mistake? 

Optimizing for visibility before proving viability. 

Teams spend months on launch decks and enablement materials... 

Before they've heard a single real objection. 

And before they've even proven the model repeats. 

GTM isn't a phase you complete. 

It's a system that either compounds or collapses. 

If it only worked once, it wasn't GTM. 

It was pure luck.

P.S - We don't create unicorns,

We breed blue whales 🐋

"We'll let the product speak for itself." 

Don’t. 

Because it never works. 

And this is the exact sentence that kills more deals than bad products ever will. 

Because buyers don't start with logic. 

They start with risk. 

Your product might be brilliant. 

But if your offer doesn't answer these questions up front, you lose: 

- What if this fails? 
- Can I defend this internally? 
- How much will this cost me politically? 
- Will procurement block this? 

Most innovation teams spend 90% on building. 

Almost nothing on packaging the offer. 

People assume that once the prospects see it, they'll get it. 

But they won't. 

Nobody has the time or attention to figure it all out. 

Strong offers do three things instead: 

1. Translate value into belief 
2. Remove risk before objections appear 
3. Give buyers a story they can repeat internally 

Without that, even the best product stays stuck in "interesting." 

Closing isn't about persuasion. 

It's about removing uncertainty.

Innovation teams don't have a budget problem. 

They have an investor mindset problem. 

Here's what I mean: 

Innovation teams manage projects as if they were parents. 

They protect each one. Defend their potential. Keep them all alive. 

But investors manage portfolios differently: 

- Expect 80% to fail 
- Fund small, early 
- Kill fast when evidence is weak 
- Double down only when signals are strong 

The difference? 

One keeps everything alive. 

The other moves resources to what's working.

If you protect everything, you’ll end up with: 

→ Crowded portfolios 
→ No clear winners 
→ Capital stuck in weak signals 
→ Decisions delayed because killing feels like failure 

Innovation isn't about running more experiments. 

It's about capital allocation under uncertainty. 

Without that mindset, teams just stay busy. 

Not effective.

A lot of innovation teams are lying to themselves. 

Not on purpose. 

But almost by default. 

Because if innovation never changes the budget, it’s just theatre. 

And as a result: 

- Companies run pilots. 
- Build prototypes. 
- Test new ideas. 

But when it's time to allocate capital? 

The innovation work sits in a separate folder. 

So what actually happens: 

→ Projects get explored, but budgets don't move 
→ Teams learn, nothing scales 
→ Experiments end, funding stays the same 

Meaning that nothing really happens. 

Real innovation doesn’t do this. 

It forces hard choices. 

It kills bad ideas instantly. 

And it gives the few that survive more funding, faster. 

Anything else is activity without consequence. 

And that’ll take you nowhere.

P.S - We don't create unicorns,

We breed blue whales 🐋

Most innovation teams don’t realise how much money they leave on the table. 

Not because they don't have budget.

But because they lock it in too early. 

Here's what I mean: 

A company has €6M for innovation. 

Bad approach: 

- 12 projects at €500k each 
- All run in parallel 
- No hard stops

Result? €6M spent. Maybe 1 project works. 

€5.5M went to ideas that never got a real yes/no. 

Better approach with the same €6M: 

Phase 1: 20 ideas x €75k 
Kill 14 fast. Continue 6. 

Phase 2: 6 projects x €250k 
Kill 4. Continue 2. 

Phase 3: 2 projects x €1.5M 
Fund what's actually working. 

Same total budget. 

Completely different logic. 

The first setup commits money once. 

The second moves capital toward signal. 

Innovation doesn't fail from lack of budget.

It fails because money gets allocated too early and reallocated too late. 

Good systems don't spend less. 

They just move faster.

A mediocre idea tested fast beats a great idea tested late.

Not because brilliance doesn't matter.

Because the market doesn't wait.

Most teams spend months perfecting the pitch.

Polishing the deck.

Aligning stakeholders.

While their competitors are already learning what works.

Speed isn't reckless execution.

It's cutting the gap between your assumption and real feedback.

Test fast and you get:

- Bad ideas exposed early
- Good ideas validated quickly
- Less money stuck in "what ifs"

Brilliant ideas feel too precious to risk.

Mediocre ideas feel safe to throw at the wall.

That's why "smart" projects die in planning.

They're waiting for certainty only customers can give.

Innovation isn't won by the best idea.

It's almost always won by whoever learns fastest.

P.S - We don't create unicorns,

We breed blue whales 🐋

Most corporate innovation will fail in 2026.

Not because they lack ideas.

Because they're structurally incapable of scaling them.

They all run innovation like project management.

But the companies that win?

They run innovation like investors.

These are Spawner companies.

And they operate on a completely different capital logic.

I just created a full breakdown of the Spawner framework covering:

- The 5 Spawner types (Adjacent, Embryonic, etc)
- Why asymmetric capital allocation drives real growth
- How to stage funding: Discovery → Validation → Scale
- The innovation system that actually works
- A practical checklist to start acting like a Spawner

This is the same system used by companies that continuously create new businesses while most corporates kill good ideas with bad process.

Want the full Spawner framework?

1. Connect with me
2. Comment "SPAWNER"

And I'll send it over to your inbox.

P.S - Repost this to get it early!

Most innovation projects I’ve seen have failed. 

Not because the idea sucked. 

But because validation stopped way too early. 

Here's what happens: 

- A prototype works 
- Users say "this is cool" 
- Team celebrates the quick win 

Then 2 years later, someone asks: "Where's the revenue?" 

The problem? 

You validated interest. 

But skipped the only thing that matters:

Actual willingness to pay. 

Real scaling requires: 

→ Moving from niche to real problem 
→ Turning promises into commitments 
→ Building repeatable economics, not just pilots 

Innovation doesn’t scale on enthusiasm. 

It scales on evidence. 

And evidence starts with customers paying.

Most bold ideas don't fail in the market. 

They fail in the building. 

Not because leadership said "no". 

Because they said "let's revisit this next quarter." 

Here's what kills internal innovation: 

- Extra approval layers 
- Requests to "refine the strategy" 
- Endless re-scoping 
- Death by a thousand delays 

The bigger the idea, the stronger the resistance. 

Beautiful pitch decks don't create confidence anymore. 

They create doubt. 

What actually builds internal support: 

1. Show evidence of a real problem worth solving 
2. Prove people will actually pay for it 
3. Be honest about what's working and what isn't 
4. Ask for small staged funding, not one massive bet 

Internal champions aren't won in boardrooms. 

They're built during the work. 

Long before you ever pitch. 

When stakeholders see the evidence early, buy-in stops being political. 

It becomes obvious.

Innovation teams obsess over burn rate.

They ignore opportunity cost.

And that's the real killer.

Burn rate shows up in dashboards.

Opportunity cost doesn't:

- It's the capital that could've gone somewhere better.
- The stronger projects that never got funded.
- The options you lost by locking budgets in too early.

Most teams track spend.

Almost none track optionality.

Here's what happens when budgets get locked:

- Weak projects keep running because they were "approved"
- Dead signals get more runway than they deserve
- Better ideas arrive when there's nothing left to move

On paper? Everything looks fine.

In reality? You've killed your ability to adapt.

The strongest innovation systems don't just control burn.

They keep capital flexible.

Fast kills. Clear thresholds. Money that follows evidence, not history.

Because the real risk isn't running out of budget.

It's running out of options.

P.S - We don't create unicorns,

We breed blue whales 🐋

Most companies fund innovation backwards.

And it can end up costing millions.

First, they approve big budgets upfront.

Then spend months defending why they shouldn't lose it.

Here's what actually works:

Start small. 

Really small.

Give teams just enough to test their riskiest assumption.

If the signal is weak? Kill it.
If the signal is strong? Add fuel.

The goal isn't to protect budgets.

It's to protect speed.

Because innovation dies in two ways:

1. Bad ideas that get too much runway
2. Good ideas that don't get rewarded fast enough

The solution is simple.

Treat funding like a filter, not a commitment.

- Start with tiny bets across multiple ideas
- Cut aggressively based on evidence
- Double down only when conviction is earned

This forces two critical behaviors:

Teams move faster (because they know decisions are coming)

Capital flows to what's working (not what was approved 6 months ago)

Shrinking budgets early isn't about thinking small.

It's about staying honest.

P.S - We don't create unicorns,

We breed blue whales 🐋

Almost all innovation teams seem busy from the outside. 

Close to 0 are actually moving the needle. 

Because rarely any of them track the right things. 

But instead, they track: 

- Experiments run. 
- Pilots launched. 
- Decks presented. 
- Stakeholders aligned. 

None of that proves actual impact. 

And that drives the wrong decisions: 

→ Projects stay alive longer than they should. 
→ Momentum gets reported instead of results. 
→ Weak ideas avoid being killed, because stopping doesn’t look like progress. 

The outcome is predictable. 

Initiatives move forward without earning the right to scale. 

And capital gets stuck in “promising” work that never moves. 

The fix isn’t complicated. 

Just change what you measure. 

Stop rewarding motion, and start rewarding outcomes. 

Revenue doesn’t come from being busy. 

It comes from narrowing the field. 

If your KPIs don’t make stopping easier, they won’t make scaling possible.

P.S - We don't create unicorns,

We breed blue whales 🐋

The most expensive mistake in innovation?

Waiting too long to kill a bad project.

Early-stage experiments are cheap to stop.

A prototype costs time, and maybe a few weeks of resources.

That’s easy to walk away from.

But here's where teams get trapped:

The "almost proven" zone.

You've got:

- Pilot data showing promise
- Teams already staffed
- Budget allocated
- Stakeholders invested

And as a result, you run "one more test."

Then another.

But that uncertainty is very expensive.

Especially when the core questions still remain unanswered:

→ Will customers actually pay? 
→ Can this scale profitably? 
→ Who owns this commercially?

The project hasn't earned the right to scale.

But it's no longer cheap to stop.

The fix is simple:

Define your evidence thresholds before you start.

And agree on kill criteria while stopping is still affordable.

Early uncertainty costs you weeks.

Late uncertainty costs you years.

“Almost proven” is where innovation bleeds money.

Not at the start.

Not even at scale.

But right in the middle.

We see this phase all the time:

- A prototype works.
- Early users are positive.
- The team feels ~70% confident.

Not enough to scale, not bad enough to kill.

So what happens?

Early ideas are cheap.

Late uncertainty is expensive.

This is the moment where:

→ Kill decisions get delayed because optics matter
→ “Just one more pilot” sounds reasonable
→ €100k quietly turns into €500k without a real yes or no

Not because teams are reckless.

But because stopping late feels worse than continuing.

So projects drift, stay alive, all while capital stays locked.

We’ve helped multiple teams step in exactly at this point.

When things feel promising, but unclear.

Want to see if we could help navigate your situation better?

Comment "INNOVATION" and I'll shoot over a DM.

Innovation teams optimise projects.

Real spawners optimise decision speed.

Because the real bottleneck isn’t ideas.

And it isn’t funding.

It’s how long teams stay in uncertainty.

Most organisations are great at starting things.

They’re terrible at deciding:

→ Is this real demand or just polite interest?
→ Is this scalable or just a nice pilot?
→ Is this worth real capital or not?

So projects linger.

More research.

One more experiment.

Another stakeholder update.

Not because the team is slow.

But because the system makes decisions hard.

Spawners work differently.

They design their innovation process around one outcome:

Turning uncertainty into a clear decision, fast.

That’s also exactly what Pre-Acceleration is built for.

It’s not about running more experiments.

It’s about shortening the distance between:

“We think this might work” and “We now know what to do with our capital.”

Go-to-market as a Service | Koude Acquisitie | Sales Executie

🇬🇧 (for 🇳🇱 see below)

At CairnShift, we help founders and commercial teams replace guesswork with the optimisation of current systems (with secure and modular AI glue) that learns, adapts, and scales - at the right pace.

You share the reality.
We interconnect (and/or optimise) your system that sharpens your advantage, drives clarity, and makes execution compounding.

From internal knowledge and (automated) workflows to AI-enhanced targeting, smart content, and predictable sales motion.

With just 1 hours of your time per week, we do the heavy lifting.
You grow with structure. Enable your team to focus on their core activities.

Your knowledge and execution is your edge.
Don’t let daily madness, and repetitive manual tasks slow you down.

👉 Book a diagnostic session: https://cal.com/frank-lautenschutz-cq6op4/letsmeet

Companies and Partners we are fortunate to work with:
Naext.ai, Van Spaendonck [loket.nl], Mourik Industry, New Edition, BW Ventures, Vention Technologies, Blits.ai, Sliced Bread ETL & many others.

🇳🇱
❗“We willen meer (new) business.”
❗“We willen nieuwe markten openen, zonder momentum te verliezen in onze core markt.”
❗“A.I. klinkt veelbelovend, maar waar kunnen we klein beginnen?”

Dat horen we in de meeste gesprekken. Bottleneck? Geen strategie, geen plan van aanpak.
❌ Leadgeneratie alleen lost het niet op
❌ Kennis verstopt in silo’s remt je af
❌ Zonder structuur kom je nergens

CairnShift helpt founders en commerciële (sales & marketing) teams om de waan van de dag te vervangen door een system wat leert, zich aanpast en schaalbaar wordt - in het juiste tempo. 

Geen dure software of nieuwe pakketen, maar slim koppelen van wat je al hebt en met AI versterken.

Jij deelt je status quo.
Wij bouwen een aanpak dat jouw onderscheidend vermogen concreet maakt, zorgt voor structuur in je commerciële aanpak, je helpt in de executie & waarmee je kunt opschalen zonder direct resources te moeten toevoegen.

Van interne kennis en (geautomatiseerde) workflows tot AI-versterkte targeting, slimme content en (koude) sales creatie.

Het vraagt slechts 1 uur per week van jullie tijd & wij doen het zware werk.
Waarmee jij met structuur kunt groeien. Je team met focus kan werken.

Je kennis & executie is je concurrentievoordeel. 
Laat de waan van de dag je niet vertragen.

👉 Laten we kennismaken: https://cal.com/frank-lautenschutz-cq6op4/letsmeet

Bedrijven en Partners met wie we mogen samenwerken:
Naext.ai, Van Spaendonck, Mourik Industrie, New Edition, BW Ventures, Vention Technologies, Blits.ai, Sliced Bread ETL & vele anderen.

Frank Lautenschutz

2025 was our first full year living in Scotland 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 

A year of transitions (a wee accent, hilly bits ⛰️, being forced to start playing golf ⛳), and - despite remote work - still the regular back-and-forth to the Netherlands for customer projects.

Across these collaborations, the focus has been on sharpening go-to-market and extending sales activities to create new business.
Building new relationships, ecosystems, and leads comes down to finding the right balance between what AI makes possible and the pragmatism of the human factor (you still have to take action 😃).

Genuinely grateful to be working with the teams at
naext Vention Technologies Mourik Industrie Sliced Bread ETL SHIFT  & Blits.ai

In each of these collaborations, I’ve been fortunate to spar and partner with some great people. Thank you for a year of growth, teaming, and great conversations Julian Vegt Bernd Fastenrath Eduard van Mierlo Maarten van Kroonenburg Niels Blonk Jan Brabers & Pepijn Beerman.

2026 is welcoming us with snow and fresh air - bringing that sense of adventure and exciting things ahead.

At CairnShift, this shows in the finalisation of an enhanced GTM capability, built on modular and cost-effective AI building blocks. It will be usable with the same ease as making a cup of strong Dutch coffee ☕.

Yes, AI is part of it 🥱 but only as a complement to what you need to execute on today - and remember for the mid to long term.

It answers the question I hear almost daily: “How do I actually get this AI thing cost-effectively going in my sales and marketing to create speed, consistency, and impact?” #cairnshiftgotyoucovered

Finally, no Scottish year-end without a proper Hogmanay: Good vibes, banter, lots of chat (🫶 Claire Hutchison), and bagpipes. 
Love them or hate them bagpipes - but they definitely bring the energy to kick off the New Year (see in comments!).

Happy New Year everyone - wishing you health, momentum, and plenty of excitement for what’s next! Would be great to catch up sometime.

Grow Your Business: Data. Process. Execution. | AI-Augmented. Human-Led.

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The Battle

Maarten Kroonenburg

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