Innovation dies with a whimper
But innovation dies when left untended. Not with a dramatic crash, but with a whimper.
It happens through a thousand small cuts – seemingly rational decisions that individually make perfect sense but collectively create an environment where innovation struggles to survive
“Hollow Men” based on TS Elliot’s Opus from Poetry + Neural Network
Nobody sets out to kill innovation.
If you ask any leader what they want to achieve, stifling creativity and reducing innovation is never on their agenda. In fact, most leaders want to champion innovation, creating programs and initiatives specifically designed to foster creative thinking and problem-solving.
But innovation dies when left untended. Not with a dramatic crash, but with a whimper.
It happens through a thousand small cuts – seemingly rational decisions that individually make perfect sense but collectively create an environment where innovation struggles to survive.
The most destructive force to innovation isn't outright opposition; I call it "shock reactions" to legitimate business problems.
Let me share an example I've seen in multiple organizations: A frontline employee notices a repetitive task consuming hours of their team's time each week. Taking initiative, they learn basic automation tools and create a simple script to handle these routine tasks. The script works well, completing in minutes what usually took hours of manual work.
The immediate management reaction?
Concern about unauthorized tools, worry about potential errors, and anxiety about compliance. All valid concerns, but the way they were handled sent a clear message: stick to the prescribed processes, don't experiment without approval, and definitely don't try to automate anything without going through proper channels.
The intent wasn't to discourage innovation.
The managers and leaders were doing their jobs, protecting the organization from potential risks. But the effect was chilling—not just on that particular employee but on everyone who heard about the incident. The message received wasn't "innovate safely"—it was "don't innovate at all."
This pattern repeats itself in various forms:
Process Rigidity: When faced with occasional mistakes from experimental approaches, organizations often respond by adding layers of approval processes. While intended to prevent errors, these processes can make it so cumbersome to try something new that people simply stop trying.
Risk Aversion: After a small innovation causes an unexpected problem, the knee-jerk reaction is often to implement strict controls. Instead of learning from the experience and improving, organizations frequently opt to prevent any similar attempts in the future.
Resource Constraints: When innovative projects occasionally lead to missed deadlines or temporary productivity dips, the common response is to tighten resource allocation and focus solely on "core work." This effectively kills the space needed for experimentation.
Standardization Over Creativity: In the name of efficiency and consistency, organizations often implement rigid standardization. While standardization has its place, when applied too broadly, it can suppress the very variations that lead to improvements.
As a new father watching my daughter Elyse learn to walk, I cannot help but compare it to our baby learning how to walk.
Each day brings new attempts, wobbles, and falls. The natural parental instinct might be to cushion every corner, to hold her hands constantly, to prevent any possibility of falling. But that's not how children learn to walk. Instead, we create a safe space, stay close enough to prevent serious harm, and encourage her to keep trying despite the tumbles.
Innovation requires the same delicate balance. Yes, there will be mistakes. Yes, some experiments will fail. And yes, occasionally there will be messes to clean up. But the solution isn't to prevent future attempts – it's to create an environment where those attempts can happen safely and learn from each iteration. There’s a manner and method to encourage innovation to continue, and a communication process that needs to be thought through.
Because innovation doesn't die from a single decisive blow. It dies from the accumulation of well-meaning but restrictive reactions, from the gradual tightening of controls, from the slow but steady message that it's safer to stick to the prescribed path than to explore new ones.