Launching a new product or project is exhilarating.
You’ve poured time, energy, and expertise into bringing something new into the world. But for innovation teams, launch day is just the beginning.
Sustained success requires more than a strong start. Building momentum post-launch is what ensures long-term impact.
At Innov8rs Phoenix in April 2025, a shared challenge echoed across sessions: how to keep innovation alive after the initial buzz fades.
Drawing on insights from David Kaufman, Senior Director of Strategic Initiatives at Resideo, Beth Gaeta, VP US Portfolio Growth at Haleon, and Nancy Yaklich, Head of Innovation and Incubation at Caterpillar, here are eight practical tips for keeping the momentum going long after launch day.

David Kaufman, Beth Gaeta & Nancy Yaklich
Senior Director of Strategic Initiatives at Resideo | VP US Portfolio Growth at Haleon | Head of Innovation and Incubation at Caterpillar
1. Recap the Launch
Before jumping to what’s next, reflect on how your launch actually went. What did you build, and why? Did you meet your core objectives? What assumptions drove your plan? Where did reality diverge?
Based on her experience with large-scale launches in consumer healthcare, Beth emphasizes the importance of understanding your starting point. “Innovation is just activation on a set of assumptions,” she says. At Haleon, her team starts with documenting those assumptions about what they believed would happen with consumers, markets, and partners. Post-launch, they evaluate what held true and where surprises emerged. That clarity sets the stage for smart adjustments and deeper insight moving forward.
A good retrospective doesn’t have to be complex. Pull together the core team across functions and revisit your pre-launch success metrics. Visualize what changed from idea to execution. Use this reflection to assess performance and set more realistic goals for the next stage of growth.
Tip: Build launch retrospectives into your innovation process. Use a standard checklist: What worked? What didn’t? What surprised you? What will we do differently next time?
2. Gather Feedback That Matters
You’re no longer working on a hypothetical. Customers are engaging with your innovation in real time, in real environments, and often in ways you didn’t anticipate. Their behavior and unfiltered feedback from actual experience is where the richest insights live.
David highlights an analogy between customer feedback and preparation for endurance sports.
“You don’t cross the finish line without checking in constantly. Are you on track? Are you adapting as needed?”
The same applies to post-launch innovation projects. It’s about active, ongoing course correction.
At Haleon, Beth shares that consumer feedback is incorporated both during the design process, and also after launch. There are regularly scheduled project team meetings as well as leadership updates when teams share consumer feedback, compare outcomes to expectations to understand what’s resonating (or not), and make informed refinements.
Nancy’s team at Caterpillar ran multiple rounds of digital testing for their Net Zero Trailer concept. A/B tests revealed which messages resonated most, which audiences engaged, and which calls to action generated real intent. “We validated interest as well as willingness to act,” she explains. “That allowed us to go into development with a clear sense of where the market was pulling us.” These insights validated the idea, and shaped everything from the product messaging to the size and pricing of the initial prototypes.
To get the most from feedback:
- Combine qualitative and quantitative sources: Include analytics, sales data, customer service logs, surveys, and interviews.
- Watch for behavioral gaps: What are customers trying to do that your solution doesn’t support?
- Prioritize emotional responses: Moments of frustration, delight, or confusion often surface the most valuable insights.
- Leverage underused contexts: Consider where your product or service could be more relevant but currently lacks visibility or support.
- Identify overlooked audiences: Explore adjacent or non-obvious user groups who may find high value in your offering.
- Avoid the reflex to launch something new: Maximize the potential of existing products before shifting focus to the next idea.
Tip: Don’t ignore untapped audiences or underutilized channels. By making small adjustments to your targeting or messaging, you can unlock significant growth from your existing resources.
3. Iterate Based on Evidence Not Opinion
Feedback without action is noise, but listening and responding can turn feedback into fuel for accelerated growth. Beth’s team at Haleon learned this during the launch of a breakthrough Advil product. Early metrics gave reason for optimism. Retailer excitement was high, repeat rates were strong, and reviews were positive. But a deeper dive into the data revealed additional opportunity in trial rates. The team realized that launch advertising could work even harder to drive first-time purchases.
So, they optimized advertising creative to better highlight core functional benefits such as eight-hour pain relief and less frequent dosing versus other options. This pivot unlocked new growth and helped drive fresh momentum into the launch.
Beth stresses that this isn’t just about reacting to issues after the fact. Her team incorporates multi-year thinking into their innovation plans, with an intentional approach to year-over-year growth from the start. She pushes teams to consider, “What’s the Year 2 move? What’s the Year 3 evolution?”
Tip: Use your original assumptions as a benchmark for review. When something underperforms, don’t just ask what went wrong. Instead, ask what assumption it challenged.
4. Keep the Team Engaged with Purpose and Pride
The post-launch dip is real. The pressure eases, adrenaline fades, and new priorities pile up. So how do you keep the team energized and engaged over the long haul?
David believes this can be tackled head-on with a focus on visibility and storytelling. His team created “The Innovators Series” which is an internal storytelling campaign modeled after binge-worthy shows. Each season features real innovation stories from across the business. They also designed a custom award that employees can display and build over time, adding cubes for milestones like patents or standout ideas. “People post it on LinkedIn. They put it in the background of Zoom calls,” David said. “It becomes aspirational.”
Nancy emphasizes the importance of finding purpose in the work. For her, engaging the team comes down to spotlighting meaningful problems and showing how innovation efforts actually solve them.
“When you talk to customers and find something that really matters to them, that’s what gets people excited internally,” she says.
Beth outlines the value of creating a strong peer network within the innovation team. “When I’m not feeling so up, being around curious people who think the same way and experiment is what keeps me going,” she explains. She also emphasizes the role of shared wins. Her team celebrates when projects hit major milestones but also shares smaller learnings that signal progress.
Together, these approaches show that engagement doesn’t come from one big initiative. It comes from designing a culture that values innovation as an ongoing, visible, and shared journey.
Tip: Recognition doesn’t have to be flashy, but it must be meaningful and visible. Celebrate every step forward, not just the finish line.
5. Don’t Abandon Last Year’s Launch
This one’s easy (and costly) to overlook. Beth calls it “launch and leave” culture. Teams get so focused on the next big thing that they neglect last year’s product just as it’s gaining traction.
Her team flipped that script with a strategy called “Launch and Love.” Instead of defaulting to new SKUs, they mined more value from existing products by:
- Running sampling campaigns to drive trial
- Targeting overlooked use cases (e.g. adjacent behaviors)
- Reaching secondary audiences (e.g. adjacent targets)
They also aligned Year 2 commercial plans with marketing and sales KPIs. That meant the team wasn’t just experimenting but they were accountable for growth, and resourced to support it.
The result was renewed growth, without building from scratch.
Tip: Treat every launch like a three-act story. Year 1 is the debut. Year 2 is the reinforcement. Year 3 is the expansion.
6. Run Fast Experiments to Validate What Comes Next
Instead of guessing what the market wants, test it. Nancy explains how they used a shadow brand strategy to validate demand for a new “Net Zero Trailer.” Rather than building and hoping, her team launched a standalone brand (EcoForge) and ran online ads with A/B tested messages.
In just two months:
- They identified 250+ interested buyers
- Refined their value proposition based on click and conversion behavior
- Validated pricing models with live tests
Tip: Build your next business case on testable signals, not internal optimism. Platforms like LinkedIn and Google Ads make it possible to simulate demand quickly and cheaply.
7. Kill the Wrong Ideas with Clarity and Kindness
Sustaining momentum isn’t just about what you continue, it’s also about what you stop. But killing an idea can feel personal.
“You’re telling someone their baby’s ugly,” explains David. That emotional weight often prevents teams from making tough but necessary decisions.
To overcome this, clear and objective decision-making criteria are essential. Nancy outlines how her team implemented a scoring framework grounded in market validation: five customer-confirmed problems, 27 hand-raisers expressing interest, and evidence of willingness to pay. If a concept didn’t meet those benchmarks, it was paused or shut down, with data used to explain the decision to leadership. “Not now” is a more useful framing than “not ever,” she adds.
Beth emphasizes that clarity upfront can help avoid difficult conversations later. Her team has become more rigorous in defining assumptions, setting KPIs, and establishing review gates early in the process. This structure allows them to have direct, data-informed conversations when momentum isn’t building as hoped.
Tip: Define exit criteria before you fall in love with the idea. It makes it easier to walk away with confidence, and leaves the door open to return when the timing is right.
8. Adapt Your Path Without Losing Sight of the Goal
Innovation is nonlinear. Sometimes your promising adjacency idea gets sucked into core operations and stalls. Sometimes your big bet flounders in the “washing machine” of internal priorities.
David tackles this with a tactic he calls “speedboating.” Big ideas run outside the core business, just like boats alongside a battleship. They move faster, avoid bureaucracy, and later rejoin the mothership once proven.
Tip: Don’t force every idea into the same pipeline. Structure pathways based on risk, speed, and resource needs.
How to Build Momentum That Lasts
By integrating these eight tips to your launch plans, you’ll build better innovations and a stronger system for maintaining them. Sustaining momentum post-launch means running retrospectives before jumping ahead, tuning in to how real customers are using (or ignoring) what you built, and doubling down on what’s working instead of defaulting to the next launch. And when it’s time to walk away? Do it fast, with data and direction.
There’s no magic to keeping innovation alive after launch, but there is a method. And it starts with making momentum your team’s responsibility, not just a happy accident.