How to Use This in GLIDR

Scorecards are a way to quantify different options that you're weighing in decision-making to help you quickly identify a top choice. This can be useful for a variety of decisions you may face in the course of building your startup, so doesn't fit exactly into one of our four categories. 

In GLIDR, depending on what you are using a Scorecard for, you may want to add your spreadsheet as a piece of Evidence - Other so you can connect it to the relevant ideas, experiments, or research that you need a decision for. You can attach any types of files to Evidence with our uploader, and then in the Connections tab you can connect it to other data types. Use the Summary section to describe the options you were weighing, the decision you made, and how that impacts your project going forward.

Learn more about each of those aspects of GLIDR:

Article excerpted from The Real Startup Book
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A scorecard is an evaluative decision-making or prioritizing shortcut, often done in a spreadsheet. It is a structured way to identify one top choice among a number of options, to help focus your use of resources (time, money). It helps achieve a goal one small step at a time. This technique can be useful if there is no clear intuitive priority.

As a quick and dirty tool, to choose one thing to focus on, scorecards are difficult to beat. It forces you to choose criteria that are important, then to weight each criterion, and finally to multiply or weight each value in order to generate a number that can then be used to rank all options being considered.

This general framework can be applied in many different areas of running a startup or innovation program:

The primary goal here is to prevent "analysis paralysis" while still providing one clear priority to make it easier to identify an immediate next step.

15-30 minutes; depends on the number of options to evaluate

Ask what are three examples of the best and three of the worst of this thing (skill, venue, performance, etc.)? What were the consistent mindsets leading to the three best examples?

This technique is highly dependent on subjective factors. While it seems "scientific," in fact a lot depends on the weights you assign to each option. Its primary goal is to give you one option to pursue, so that you can execute on it without dwelling on which decision you ought to make. If you take action quickly, you can always change your mind later. However if you don't take action at all, you won't generate a result.

A scorecard may generate a result that is counterintuitive. If that is the case, then most likely the result that you wanted is the "correct" option to pursue. Going through the exercise can help to surface what you already know, but you can't articulate consciously.

As this technique does not gather data, it is purely a subjective ranking tool in order to take action. Even though it looks very considered and rational, it should not be confused with data-backed decision tools. The numbers used are subjective estimates.