SIDEBAR: "Has innovation become a dirty word?"

Innovation has become a word that can sometimes feel a little ... awkward. Which is why we wanted to use the provocation of “has innovation become a dirty word” to kick off a bit of a series of over coffee or beers chats.

When Charlie Rowat and I used to work together, innovation was a bit of a shiny object in most organisations. There was a lot of hope, excitement, a few flashy job titles, very photogenic innovation labs and a near endless stream of press releases announcing all sorts of innovation initiatives.

But now it all feels like a bit of a faded era. In some instances I’ve had former innovation executives bemoan that it’s a toxic title, stymying careers while the consulting side of innovation seems to be struggling for air.

So what’s happened? Is innovation a dirty word these days? And what lessons might be take from discussing it?

If you’re not a podcast person, or the backlog has become overwhelming, then here’s a bit of a summary for what we covered.

An Overcorrection From Cool to Cautionary

“Innovation for a long time was off to the side. It didn’t necessarily fit with the core of the strategy, but it gave scope to explore where the world was going. The overcorrection was putting it into the product realm, which feels like moving furniture around on the Titanic.”

Not too long ago, though roughly pre-pandemic, innovation teams were a pretty loud and noticeable part of almost every institution. Often with a branded innovation lab, digital outreach program and sometimes a well publicised pipeline of projects they were working on. An unfortunate side effect was it could be a bit like they were seen as the “cool kids” in an office with extra amenities, ping pong tables, brighter walls, bean bag chairs, kombucha or iced coffee on tap etc.

That freedom meant a bit of a disconnection from the rest of the organisation, in some ways that was good because space, in other ways that was bad because distance. On balance, these teams probably didn’t have a big enough impact but there’s a variety of reasons for this. Some budget, some ambition, some strategy, some misfortune.

Over time, companies have brought innovation closer to the core, typically embedding it within product teams and IT. We wonder if that has made what passes for innovation too safe. Many, including us, have preached that innovation should be a part of business as usual, but now that it is the innovations themselves have become less unusual. We see fewer big, bold leaps and more feature factories that tweak and iterate.

In many cases innovation is iteration and constantly improving something but in a mindset of a measurement culture the impact becomes limited. In trying to tame innovation ambitions, did we lose a bit of exploratory energy?

Focus on the Problem, Not the Process

“Design thinking got pitched as a linear process: talk to customers, stick Post-its on the wall, prototype, and you’re done. The real work is in the messy process of uncovering the problem you didn’t even know you were solving.”

The story of innovation’s decline is also the story of overprescribed methodologies. Design thinking, lean startup, agile are all incredible tools that have often been reduced to step-by-step processes with the expectation that if they’re followed correctly, success will surely follow. But the fact that so many projects fail – even though we stuck to the process – means these methodologies are tainted.

The messy but vital bit of the process where you’re really digging into the problem – questioning it, reframing it – is sorta buried beneath the post-its and slides.

Charlie gave Expensify as an example. They’ve created a Slack channel where employees can raise problems without needing to propose solutions, but they must justify why the problem matters. It gives a bit more time for thinking and curiosity, before jumping straight to solutions.

The best innovation likely doesn’t begin with answers but really, really good questions. You know the sort that make you wince because they’re so frustratingly obvious in hindsight. There might be a bit of brief culture here too, where we take a challenge at face value and then push it through the process.

Sometimes the process needs to be challenged, broken, twisted, tweaked and knowing when to be innovative with itself.

Embracing Uncertainty or Selling Certainty?

“A lot of design thinking influencers have pivoted to being futurists. The real promise of futures thinking is getting comfortable with uncertainty, but too often it’s sold as a way to create certainty.”

Corporates crave certainty. As methods like design thinking fall out of vogue due to their perceived inability to guarantee success, futures thinking is on the rise. But as Charlie points out, it walks a fine line between empowerment and delusion.

The true promise of this approach is its ability to help organisations confront and navigate uncertainty, an absolutely essential skill in an unpredictable world. However, the allure of having greater certainty in a world that is likely to experience more geopolitical pressures, often hijacks this narrative. Instead of fostering resilience and adaptability, futurists can often package their insights as definitive answers, providing a bit of a false comfort rather than preparing businesses for what is still really unknown.

We need futures thinking, but we need to make sure we use it appropriately lest it too becomes as dirty a word as innovation. It’s not about predicting the future, but expanding the understanding of the range of possibilities down the line. It means staying curious, being agile to test assumptions and preparing for multiple possible outcomes rather than a single path. We hope the temptation to promise certainty and accept single answers is resisted.

The Burden of Capability Building

Big businesses perpetually build capability. Instead of leading with an idea, they lead with, ‘If we have this platform, then we can do XYZ.’ It’s reverse innovation that often leads to nothing getting done.

I really appreciated this critique of perpetually building internal capabilities above solving customer problems. Too often, organisations prioritise capability building as a prerequisite to innovation. “If we have this platform, then we can do XYZ”, they tell themselves. But this reverse innovation mindset often leads to inertia. Instead of starting with bold ideas and building the necessary capabilities to bring them to life, businesses stall, managing the internal platforms, which in some cases entrench bureaucracy.

The reality is that capabilities should follow vision, not the other way around. History shows that the most transformative ideas often emerge in resource-constrained environments where ingenuity, not infrastructure, drives the innovation. It’s important to see that platforms and processes are tools, not outcomes. Start with the idea, build the belief and let the capabilities grow to meet the ambition rather than the other way around.

Why Innovators Need Better Parachutes

“You need psychological safety to push and take risks. What if we had parachute payments for innovation professionals—so failing spectacularly doesn’t mean you’re out on the street?”

Why do most big ideas fail to leave the boardroom? Fear. Fear of career-ending failure, fear of being wrong, fear of rocking the boat. It’s no wonder innovation teams stick to safer ideas when the stakes feel so high.

Here’s a radical thought: What if we treated innovation like football? In the Premier League, parachute payments soften the financial blow of relegation. Imagine giving innovation professionals a similar safety net, freeing them to take bold risks without worrying about their livelihoods.

Psychological safety isn’t just a nice-to-have; it’s the fuel that makes bold ideas possible. After all, no one ever built the iPhone by worrying about quarterly performance reviews.

Making Innovation Fun Again

At its heart, innovation is about curiosity, creativity and courage. It’s messy and unpredictable, but isn’t that what makes it exciting. Maybe the problem isn’t that innovation is a dirty word; but it’s probably fair to say we’ve overcorrected to playing it too safe, going too insular and sometimes not exploring what might otherwise have been seen as trivial.

We need to bring back a bit more fun here, embracing unconventional approaches, telling better stories and create the psychological safety to take risks. A thought that emerged in the writing up of this conversation is that perhaps what people actually want in business is creativity. Innovation was a sort of corporate way of trying to formalise creativity, but the attempt to justify itself dampened the sparks.

What do you think? Is innovation really that hard? Is it a dirty word? Have we just been making it harder than it needs to be?

Let us know your thoughts, we’ll keep these conversations going, typically that’s where the good stuff comes from.