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The Idea Graveyard Bury an idea.

Every organisation has one: the idea that died in a steering committee, a budget round or a legal review. Give it an epitaph, share its tombstone, and add it to the wall ahead of The Creativity Summit on 27 November.

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Write the epitaph

Example filled in
Your role and industry, never your name.

Before you add it. The graveyard never asks for your name or email. When you add a tombstone, the fields above are stored by our host, Netlify, which also records your IP address, and Dinko and Nikhil read them. By adding it, you let us show the idea, its years and its cause of death on the wall and at the summit. Keep company names and confidential details out. Details in the privacy policy.

The wall

Here lie good ideas

Tombstones people chose to add, read by Dinko and Nikhil before they appear. The ones marked Example were written by us to get the wall started. We plan to bring the wall to The Creativity Summit at Microsoft HQ on 27 November.

Example

Here lies

Internal idea marketplace

2017 – 2019

No budget owner

Example

Here lies

AI sandbox for everyone

2023 – 2024

Legal said “maybe”

Example

Here lies

Customer advisory board

2020 – 2022

The person who cared left

Example

Here lies

Two-week experiments

2021 – 2022

Business case required before the experiment

Example

Here lies

Startup partnership programme

2019 – 2021

Reorganised out of existence

Example

Here lies

Shared data platform

2018 – 2025

Lost in pilot purgatory

The autopsy

Why good ideas die in organisations

Ideas rarely die of a clear no. They die of process: a meeting that asks for certainty too early, a pilot nobody is paid to scale, a budget line that belongs to no one. These are five patterns we hear about most, and the episodes where we take each one apart.

Death by steering committee
The idea is presented to people who weren't there when the problem was found, and the meeting ends with “let's take this offline”. What wins that room is a story, not a spreadsheet: a named customer, a concrete before and after, a press release written before the product exists.
Listen: Why Your Best Ideas Die in Meetings (And How to Fix It)
Listen: Why Average Ideas Win and Great Ideas Fail in Corporate Settings
Business case before the experiment
The organisation asks for proof that only an experiment could produce. The way out is to shrink the ask: a prototype or a minimum viable product, tested with real users and judged on desirability, feasibility and viability before anyone writes a five-year forecast.
Listen: Innovation Masterclass [Part 3]: Stop Killing Ideas in the Maturation Phase
Pilot purgatory
The pilot works, and then nothing happens. Nobody owns the step from pilot to default, so the idea lives on as a slide. Scaling is change management: preparing people for the change, managing it, and reinforcing it after launch.
Listen: Innovation Masterclass [Part 4]: Change Management for Successful Implementation
Listen: The People Killing Innovation Aren't Who You Think
No budget owner
Everyone likes it, nobody owns the money. Frugal innovation turns the constraint around: start with what you have, design for the local context, and let the limitation shape the solution, as BRAC's schools, M-Pesa and Nollywood did.
Listen: 5 Steps to Kill Bureaucracy and Spark Innovation
Innovation theatre
The idea gets a launch, a logo and a town-hall demo, but nobody is measured on shipping it. Attention and vanity metrics stand in for progress until the budget moves on.
Listen: Death By Innovation Theater: A Startup's $2M Wake-Up Call

Questions, answered

The short answers

What is the Idea Graveyard?
A public memorial for ideas that organisations killed before they had a fair test. You write a three-line epitaph, get a tombstone card to share, and can add it to the wall without your name. Creativity Boosters runs it ahead of The Creativity Summit on 27 November 2026.
Why do good ideas die inside organisations?
Rarely because someone says no. More often they stall: a steering committee asks for a business case before the experiment, a pilot never finds an owner to scale it, or the one person who cared moves on. The wall shows which of these happens most.
Isn't “kill your darlings” good advice?
Yes, when you do it on purpose. Killing a darling means dropping an idea you love because a fair test showed it doesn't work. Most ideas in this graveyard never got that test: they stalled in a committee, a budget round or a pilot nobody scaled. Kill your darlings; don't let the organisation bury them alive.
What happens to the tombstones?
Dinko and Nikhil read every submission. Approved tombstones appear on the wall here, and we plan to bring them to The Creativity Summit at Microsoft HQ in Lyngby, just north of Copenhagen, on 27 November 2026.
Is it anonymous?
The graveyard never asks for your name or email, and the wall shows only the idea, its years and its cause of death. Our host, Netlify, records the IP address with each submission, as it does for every web form; we delete raw submissions within three months. Keep company names and confidential details out of the epitaph.
Can I get a tombstone removed?
Yes. Email dinko@thecreativityboosters.com with the idea's name and years and we'll take it down, no questions asked.

The Creativity Summit · 27 November 2026

Rather keep the next one alive?

The Creativity Summit is a free, curated day at Microsoft HQ in Lyngby, just north of Copenhagen, for leaders from Danish enterprises and scale-ups who run innovation. One of its three themes is surviving the corporate immune system.

Request a seat