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# How to argue for your innovation project
- URL: https://www.pesec.no/how-to-argue-for-your-innovation-project/
- Published: 2021-05-10T07:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2021-05-10T07:40:29.000Z
- Description: Explain the strategic rationale, visualise the opportunity cost, and use emotional language.
- Author: Bruno Pešec
- Tags: Innovation, Strategy, Leadership

Innovators and managers often ask me how can they get their project "green-lighted" or "funded." I advise them to stake their argument on following three points:

1. *Strategic rationale*. Show how is your idea aligned with the business strategy, how would it contribute to specific targets and objectives, and how does it fit in the long picture.
2. *Opportunity cost*. Don't go with fear-mongering (burning platforms, and all those metaphors). Demonstrate why *not* doing your proposed innovation project would *cost* company more than doing other things.\*
3. *Emotional language*. Don't get hung up on data, numbers, and purely rational arguments. Bring passion to your descriptions, and paint a vivid picture of how your organisation and customer would be changed with your idea.

And don't forget to (a) leverage the [three dimensions of power](https://www.pesec.no/get-your-idea-funded-by-questioning-power-dynamics/), and (b) check if your idea is [understandable](https://www.pesec.no/do-they-get-it/).

*\*Here is a very simplified example. Let's say your management has a budget of 100 units. You are asking for 10 of that. That means that someone will not get those 10\. Let's say that your idea has a potential to double that. If they don't give you that 10, and put it into another thing, that might bring back 12, then the opportunity cost would be 8 units (20-12).*