Welcome back to Marketoonist, the cartoon I’ve been hand-drawing to poke fun at marketing and business nearly every week since 2002. Was this email forwarded to you? Please subscribe here.

The Innovation Funnel

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Many organizations use some form of an innovation funnel to bring ideas to life. It starts with lots of ideas at the front end and then launches whatever survives all the way to the back end.

Yet this Darwinian process of bringing ideas to life doesn’t necessarily lead to survival of the fittest ideas. By design, the innovation funnel leads to survival of the safest ideas.

Organizations are good at spotting risks. As ideas run the organizational gauntlet, they can get pruned, sheared, shaped, and watered down beyond recognition. On the way, they can lose the essence of the idea. They may lose their point of difference and reason for being.

A diverse team can polish an idea and make it stronger. Silo thinking can sand the edges and make the idea weaker.

The path of least resistance is to play it safe. But playing it safe can be risky — leading to “me to” products, undifferentiated knock-offs, and more of the same.

We can’t break through the clutter by adding to it.

Quick Keynote Update

I want to spotlight an event I’m really excited about this Spring — DOT Innovations 2026 on April 22 in Houston, Texas. It’s a legendary food innovation conference. I’ll be talking about The Funny Side of AI & Innovation.

As always, please let me know if you’d like to talk about any events you’re planning (or know of) that you think could be a good fit for some cartoon levity and insight.

For an idea of my approach to keynotes, here’s a full 30-minute keynote from one of my favorite events last year — Opticon 2025 hosted by Optimizely:

Cartoon From The Archives

Here’s one of the very first cartoons I ever drew, which addressed this theme back in November 2002. And here’s where you can read and search all 23 years of these cartoons.

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Thank you for all of your support (and cartoon material)!

-Tom

P.S. If you like these marketoons, here are a few ways to help:

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4. Buy my latest book

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About Marketoonist

Marketoonist is the thought bubble of me, Tom Fishburne. I first started drawing cartoons as a student in the Harvard Business School newspaper (not quite as well-known for humor as the Lampoon) and later started this newsletter from a General Mills cubicle in 2002. The cartoons have followed my career ever since. I poke fun at the ever-changing world of marketing and business because I believe that laughing at ourselves can help us do our best work.