Skilled peers are the best judge of whether or not a new idea is going to be successful.
We suck at forecasting which of our ideas are going to be the biggest and best. We are prone to overrate our own contributions, and underrate anything that’s “too unfamiliar”.
The best forecasters of our new ideas are our peers who are themselves working to produce similar ideas. Our bosses are too risk averse. Consumers and audiences don’t really know how to handle something new. Once they are used to it, they may love it.
Seinfeld was expected to be a massive flop based on testing and what the people in the sitcom business said. But it was given a chance by people who made other toes of TV shows, because they saw what the show was for itself, rather than what it wasn’t.