The Innovation Leadership Blog
AI is merging executive and entry-level roles in design, marketing, PR, engineering and architecture. Learn why leaders must get hands-on...
Your people have ideas, but risk-averse leadership makes acting on them feel unsafe. Learn how innovation leaders build the confidence to act...
Leaders say they want fast failure, but reviews and promotions reward safe bets. Here is how to audit what your system really teaches about risk...
Short answer: In most organizations, the biggest barrier to innovation is not budget, talent or technology. It is the leader. Five everyday habits do the damage: demanding certainty, approving...
AI speeds up whatever your leadership already rewards. Learn which innovation leadership habits AI magnifies and what to fix first...
Leaders lose honest feedback without noticing, and innovation suffers first. Learn the three warning signs and how to win the truth back...
Most companies have more innovation ideas than they know what to do with. They also have more technology, more customer data, more research, and more ways to experiment than at any point in history...
Most companies do not have an innovation pipeline problem. They have an innovation graveyard problem. Projects that everyone knows are not working stay alive because someone senior sponsored them. A...
AI just destroyed one of innovation’s favorite excuses. For years, companies said they needed more ideas. More brainstorming. More workshops. More people thinking outside the box. Now anyone can...
Psychological safety has become one of the most popular prescriptions for improving innovation. Leaders are told to create an environment where employees feel comfortable sharing ideas, questioning...
Most leaders would never intentionally create innovation theater. Yet plenty of companies do. They hold innovation workshops, run hackathons, create incubators, bring in consultants, launch pilots and...
Mastercard just spent real research money to confirm something most innovation leaders don’t want to hear: their idea problem isn’t an idea problem. The company commissioned Forrester...
95% of corporate AI pilots are failing to deliver any return. That statistic, from MIT research on enterprise AI adoption, has been circulating for a year now. Most of the commentary blames the...
I gave this talk for the first time to a real audience this week — the COO Forum (cooforum.net), a peer network where second-in-command executives get together to work through the problems that come...
Every leader I’ve worked with who insisted on starting from scratch shared the same belief: that ignoring what came before was the path to something truly new. They were wrong. Expensively...
It’s the unintended consequence of thoughtfully designed leadership development programs when they’re applied to a function that doesn’t work like all the others; innovation. The reason leadership...
Understanding effective innovation strategy means recognizing that not all innovators operate the same way. There are different kinds of innovation thinkers in the world, and they're not all created...
Most innovation leaders evaluate projects one at a time. That's the wrong question. The leaders who consistently deliver results think like Warren Buffett, not Walt Disney — and it changes everything...
Snap unveiled $2,195 AR glasses called Specs on June 16, 2026, and the internet tore them apart — mocking the design, balking at the price, and watching Snap’s stock fall more than 11% in a...
The focus on integrating AI into innovation shouldn't be on the skills needed to create effective inputs, it should be on the skills to assess the effectiveness of AI outputs. The question is whether...
Bell Labs invented the transistor, cellular networks, Unix & the laser.
Then corporate leaders killed it.
Not bad luck. Not bad markets - Bad decisions...
If you’re struggling to build a high-performing innovation team, the issue may not be your strategy, your funding, or even your leadership.
It may be your HR system.
Most HR organizations are designed...
To thrive during an economic turbulence, companies must change their innovation strategy. Budgets must be cut while continuing to invest in innovation. The key is having a balance and making strategic...