Hello Innovator!

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:

• This Week’s Article: Learn to Kill Your (Product) Babies

• Share This: Five Signs that Your Business Unit Must Die

• Case Study: How Nokia divested of their handset unit. And how Microsoft squandered the purchase.

Learn to Kill Your (Product) Babies

Real innovation starts by recognizing legacy stagnation.

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.

How to Spot the Sacrificial Lamb

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.

Recognize the Signs

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.”