At the very end of this address to Stanford students in the Q & A section, Janice Fraser of Adaptive Path talks about "Intrapreneurial" ventures, where she and her partners of an existing company evaluate ideas for a new business direction.

She and her partners created a list of gating criteria, by which she means "how will we know if this is the right venture for us?"

Their list included:

- something that would catch on virally

- redefining a category based on a user experience challenge, because we are a user experience firm

- solid revenue model

- relevance to our ecosystem

http://edcorner.stanford.edu/authorMaterialInfo.html?mid=1561

I think the gating criteria themselves are probably specific to the partners and their skills and passions, but the concept that you get the team first, come up with a whole bunch of ideas and throw out 95% of them based on specific, well-thought-out criteria, is a good one.