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We talk a lot about recognizing and building what comes next. What we don’t interrogate often is when to get rid of what you already have. Sometimes you have to burn the fields to make way for new crops (or products).

This week we focus on how, and when, to kill your (product) babies.

Learn to recognize business units that are eating more than their fair share of resources. How to make a case for sunsetting them. And how to approach your C-Suite to broach the idea of getting rid of a still-profitable business unit.

Here’s what you’ll find:

The hardest move in corporate innovation isn’t building something new.
It’s killing something that still drives revenue.

Some business units perform, but they do so in a market that’s already in its death throes. Customers are aging. Margins are shrinking. And the delivery model is welded to assumptions that are simply no longer true.

Yet they survive. Because they’re still profitable, still respected, still “the core” of the business.

This is how companies stall: what once drove success becomes sacred. Processes built for past market opportunities persist long after those markets have shifted. Risk models, tech choices, and governance frameworks built for yesterday become the assumed defaults for tomorrow. Over time, those engrained systems calcify, forcing new opportunities to be evaluated through the wrong lens.

The organization loses its ability to adapt because it’s still trying to protect what worked before, instead of building what’s next.

A business unit becomes dangerous when its past performance gives it veto power over everything else the org tries to accomplish.

That power shows up in quiet ways: budget approvals that always tilt toward the familiar, compliance policies designed around legacy workflows, strategy sessions where everything new is forced to prove it won’t threaten what’s already working.

It’s not that anyone is trying to block innovation. But the bar for change gets set according to the existing rules, metrics, and risk postures. Progress gets judged by the people who built the systems it threatens. Legacy business units shape the metrics, workflows, and assumptions that define what counts as credible. And without meaning to, they turn every new idea into a test of compatibility instead of potential.

The organization defaults to protecting itself instead of championing evolution.

Here’s how to know a business unit has outlived its strategic welcome:

Revenue is steady, but growth has flatlined.
It’s making money, but it’s not making moves. The numbers still look good… until you realize they’ve looked the same for three years.

Its model becomes the default lens.
Everything new gets compared to this product. If “what’s next” isn’t structured the same, priced the same, or delivered in the same way, it’s dismissed as too risky or weird.

Experiments die quietly.
Not because they failed on merit, but because they couldn’t pass legacy checkpoints. Compliance. Procurement. Security. Budget cycles. Death by a thousand inherited cuts.

Top talent keeps a safe distance.
Ambitious people don’t want to babysit a fading star. They want a shot at building what’s next, not managing what’s left.

Everything feels like a retrofit.
Budgets, systems, and workflows are all built to support this business unit. Anything new has to twist itself to fit the restrictions of what exists today.

When a product or business unit starts acting like the mold for all future vision instead of one possible model for success, it’s no longer a contributor. It’s a constraint dressed up as a “best practice.”

Advocating for shutting down a profitable business unit is a career-risking move unless you bring proof.

Your job isn’t to attack performance. It’s to show the rest of the org that the performance of the outdated product has become stagnant (or worse, a constraint). And that continuing to protect the unit is more dangerous than moving on from it.

Here’s how to frame the conversation:

Quantify the opportunity cost.
Show what the company is not doing because this product is absorbing talent, budget, and attention. Highlight shelved initiatives, delayed product launches, ignored customer segments, and missed opportunities for growth.

Expose structural dependencies.
Map the rules, approvals, systems, and policies built around this product or business unit. Demonstrate how they prevent the business from exploring or scaling new approaches.

Model reallocation upside.
Take real headcount and budget numbers from the legacy unit and show what you could do with them. This isn’t theoretical. Build a model. Show your math.

Reframe risk.
Most execs fear shutting down a profit center. Shift that fear: the greater risk is letting a flatlining unit define your future constraints.

This isn’t a teardown. It’s a proposal for reallocation. You’re betting that future relevance matters more than past success and proving why the company should too.

Killing a product or business unit doesn’t mean flipping a switch. It means taking away its institutional priority. You stop protecting it, stop resourcing it disproportionately, and stop letting it dictate how the rest of the organization behaves.

Three ways to do that:

Reassign and reframe.
Move the business unit into a separate internal structure with limited strategic influence. Let it continue serving existing customers while reallocating core resources and decision-making authority to new initiatives. This keeps the unit alive without letting it dominate the roadmap.

Outcompete it.
Build its replacement, deliberately, and with full commitment. Treat it like the future of the business, not just a side project. Give it the funding, autonomy, and leadership talent it needs to succeed on its own terms.

Sunset it.
Set a hard timeline. Communicate it to internal and external stakeholders. Create a wind-down plan that respects customers and gives employees a path forward. Be explicit about where those freed-up resources will go.

Be direct with customers. Explain what’s ending, what’s replacing it, and why it’s better. If you’re taking something away, prove that the new offer will serve their needs more effectively. If there’s short-term friction, acknowledge it. Then over-deliver. Customers don’t need spin. They need a reason to believe in the future as you see it.

Cutting a business unit isn’t an act of destruction. It’s an act of unblocking. You’re clearing out what no longer earns its influence—so the rest of the company can finally move.

We’ve given you the signs. We’ve given you the framing. You know how to spot a business unit that’s outlived its strategic value. You know how to build a case that cuts through politics. You know how to execute cleanly, without sparking chaos.

Now the hard part starts.

As an innovation leader, you won’t be handed permission. You’ll be expected to defend what’s comfortable. But the job is to challenge what’s comfortable and to build something that isn’t just new, but necessary.

You don’t need more ideas. You need fewer anchors.

Kill what works. Let something better grow from the ashes.

By 2013, Nokia’s mobile handset division, previously their crown jewel, was still generating significant cash. But it no longer matched the growth of newer smartphone ecosystems. Profitability from their handset market masked a deeper truth: the unit was steering leadership and investment decisions toward sustaining a fading model rather than focusing on future opportunities.

That year, Nokia made one of the clearest “kill what works” moves in recent corporate history: it sold its entire handset business to Microsoft for €5.4 billion (about $7.2 billion). This wasn’t a desperate cut; incoming CEO Risto Siilasmaa reframed the sale as a strategic redirection. Nokia retained its high-potential network infrastructure and licensing divisions (assets aligned with fast-growing markets like 5G) while extracting itself from a unit that required protection, not reinvestment.

Why this matters for innovators:

While Nokia made the hard call, Microsoft couldn’t do the same within its own walls. Even as the world moved to mobile-first experiences, Microsoft kept prioritizing Windows and Office as sacred foundations. When they tried to compete in mobile, they brought those assumptions with them, forcing Windows onto smartphones instead of rethinking what a Microsoft-native experience could actually mean in a post-PC world.

Instead of killing the legacy that constrained them, they tried to scale it.

The result? Their mobile OS never gained traction. Developers stayed away. Customers didn’t convert. And every device decision was filtered through outdated compatibility logic that served the old empire instead of building a new one. When the entire market moved, Microsoft stayed tethered to what used to work.

The lesson? If your future has to tiptoe around your past, it’s already compromised. Microsoft might have reaped the rewards of their Nokia acquisition…if they had bothered to free themselves from their own legacy thinking first.

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