Over the course of the past year, the MIX Online team has taken some great risks designing and developing our labs. Each lab requires months of effort, and we occasionally have to placate our legal department or internal influencers to do things that some consider controversial. Not all of our labs pan out. I’ve personally worked on two labs that never saw the light of the day. It's truly frustrating when this happens, when the risk does not pay off. Back to the drawing board. On the other hand, it's extremely rewarding when we successfully launch a new lab. Our biggest challenge is gauging whether our efforts will be worth the risk. Are the risks worth taking? What's the potential return for our risk? Is the potential return worth the effort? We try to mitigate high risks and envision all possible outcomes and issues that might derail a project before we start. The S.W.O.T. analysis is a simple, useful tool we use to evaluate risk and form a good project strategy. It's basic... - Jeff Sandquist