Validate your project idea through internal pitches

You may feel excited about starting work on your new project idea, crunching numbers to prove the business case and validating your idea in the field with a pilot project. However, you may quickly find yourself entangled in a jungle of dependencies — involving other departments and vendors — spending months just trying to prove that your idea is worth pursuing, all while losing precious time to pivot or fail fast.

Another way of implementing Daniel Priestley’s CAOS concept in a corporate environment is to present your project directly to potential internal customers to gauge interest and feedback without actually building anything in the first place.

In his book "Key Person of Influence", Priestley introduces the CAOS model — standing for Create, Audience, Offer, and Sales — as a way to test and validate ideas with minimal investment. While the concept is designed with entrepreneurship in mind, its core principle is equally powerful within corporate structures. Especially in companies where executing an idea often means dealing with legacy systems, strict governance, or cross-departmental sign-offs, CAOS offers a leaner alternative.

Instead of diving into resource-intensive planning or waiting for approvals, you can flip the script:

Create a compelling narrative or prototype (even a simple slide deck or a clickable mockup).
Pitch it to an internal audience — colleagues in other departments who would actually use or benefit from the solution.
Position a hypothetical offer: “If we had this solution, would you use it?”
Use the resulting interest and feedback to simulate sales, refining your approach and generating internal momentum.

This strategy helps you identify whether there's real demand inside the organization before you involve IT, legal, procurement, or external partners. And it saves you from the classic trap of “build it and hope they come.”

Why internal pitching works in corporate settings

Corporates often talk about innovation but rarely provide the environment for fast failure or iterative growth. A polished internal pitch lets you:

Validate desirability before investing in feasibility or viability.
De-risk the project by showing early buy-in from departments that would otherwise block or delay rollout.
Gather social proof and champions internally to strengthen your case when it’s time to scale the idea.

It’s a mini-market test within your own walls — without waiting for funding cycles or lengthy steering committee meetings.

Case example: From pitch to pilot in two weeks

At a previous employers, a colleague had the idea to automate a recurring reporting process across multiple plants. Instead of jumping into development, he built a five-slide pitch deck: outlining the problem, the proposed solution, and a clickable no-code prototype. He presented it informally to three plant managers and asked, “Would this save your team time?”

The response was unanimous: “Yes — and we’d help test it.” With that validation, he secured internal backing, fast-tracked the IT discussion, and had a working pilot running two weeks later.

No budget approvals. No six-month planning phase. Just a simple internal pitch that hit the right nerve.

How to run your first internal pitch

Clarify the problem you’re solving — preferably one that already exists in someone else’s backlog.
Build a lightweight narrative — slide deck, mockup, or screen recording is enough.
Identify internal stakeholders — real users, not just decision-makers.
Ask for feedback, not funding — frame it as a “what if we could…” scenario.
Capture interest — who would want to test or champion this?
Refine the idea — based on objections, use cases, or alternative needs you uncover.

Internal pitches aren’t about pushing your idea — they’re about inviting others to see value in it before it exists.

Enjoyed the post or have feedback? I’d love to hear from you — just reply via email, or connect on LinkedIn. Feel free to share this post on X, LinkedIn, or Facebook if you think someone else might enjoy it too.