The standard innovation process has an evidence problem.

Not a shortage of evidence — most organisations generate substantial research across the development cycle. The problem is timing.

The evidence that matters most — real behavioural signal from real consumers — arrives at the end of the process. At launch. After the commitments have been made.

Everything that precedes it is, in various ways, a proxy. Concept scores are a proxy. Focus group reactions are a proxy. Claimed purchase intent is a proxy. Useful signals, all of them — but signals that measure something adjacent to commercial viability rather than commercial viability itself.

The organisation acts on these proxies because that's what's available. Decisions are made. Resources are committed. The launch machinery starts turning. And by the time the market provides its verdict, the window for acting on it has largely closed.

This is not a process failure. It's a structural condition.

Behavioural evidence — the kind that comes from real purchase decisions — has traditionally only been available in one place: the market. And the market only speaks after you've launched.

The question worth asking is whether that has to remain true. Whether there are ways to generate something meaningfully closer to real behavioural evidence earlier in the development cycle — not as a replacement for launch, but as a way of informing the commitments that precede it.

The answer, increasingly, is yes. Live digital campaigns — paid media run against real target audiences, driving to landing pages with real calls to action — can generate behavioural data that is qualitatively different from survey research. Real people, in their natural environment, making real decisions about whether to stop, engage, and act. Not asked what they would do. Observed doing it.

This is not a perfect proxy for in-store purchase behaviour. No pre-launch method is. But it is materially closer to the signal that matters than stated preference research — and it can be generated before the irreversible commitments are made.

The brands that move this evidence earlier don't eliminate launch risk. They reduce the proportion of launch decisions made in an evidential vacuum. And in an environment where 80% of new products fail, reducing that proportion is not a marginal improvement.

It's the most important investment an innovation team can make.