My Thoughts

Why Your Company's Innovation Process is Creating Clones, Not Ideas

Three months ago, I sat through yet another "innovation workshop" where fifteen middle managers were asked to brainstorm solutions to customer retention. The facilitator—fresh out of university with a business degree and zero real-world experience—handed out sticky notes and told us to "think outside the box."

What happened next was predictable. Fifteen variations of the same three ideas. Customer loyalty programs. Better social media engagement. Improved customer service training.

Innovation theatre at its finest.

After twenty-two years consulting with Australian businesses—from mining companies in Kalgoorlie to tech startups in Melbourne—I've watched this same tragic comedy play out hundreds of times. Companies spend enormous amounts on innovation processes that systematically eliminate actual innovation.

The Brainstorming Myth That's Killing Creativity

Let's start with the elephant in the room: group brainstorming doesn't work. Never has. Research from the 1950s proved this, yet we're still forcing people into conference rooms with whiteboards like it's some kind of business ritual.

The problem isn't the people. It's the process.

When you put twelve people in a room and ask for ideas, you get the lowest common denominator. The loudest voice wins. The most politically safe suggestions survive. Anything genuinely different gets politely murdered by committee consensus.

I learned this the hard way in 2019 when working with a Perth logistics company. Their "innovation sessions" were producing ideas so vanilla they could have been generated by a chatbot. Meanwhile, their warehouse supervisor—who never spoke up in meetings—had quietly developed a tracking system that saved them $2.3 million annually.

Breakthrough ideas don't come from workshops. They come from individuals who understand problems deeply and have the freedom to explore solutions without judgment.

Why Your Innovation Framework is Actually an Anti-Innovation Framework

Most corporate innovation processes follow the same template. Someone attended a conference, bought a book, or hired a consultant who promised them "design thinking" or "lean startup methodology." These frameworks aren't inherently bad, but the way companies implement them creates bureaucratic nightmares that strangle creativity.

Here's what typically happens:

Stage gates that require approval before moving forward. Innovation committees that meet monthly to review progress. Business cases that must be submitted before exploring an idea. Risk assessments that eliminate anything remotely interesting.

The process becomes more important than the outcome.

Last year, I worked with a Brisbane manufacturing company whose innovation process took six months to approve purchasing a $200 software tool that could automate their inventory tracking. Six months! Their competitor—a family business with no formal innovation process—implemented the same solution in two weeks and gained a significant market advantage.

Sometimes the best innovation process is having no formal process at all.

The Corporate Antibodies That Attack New Ideas

Large organisations develop immune systems that reject foreign concepts. It's not intentional malice—it's institutional self-preservation.

Every established company has sacred cows. "We've always done it this way." "Our customers expect this." "The regulatory requirements don't allow for that." These become reflexive responses to anything that challenges the status quo.

The accounting department wants predictable budgets. The legal team wants minimal risk. The operations team wants proven processes. Innovation, by definition, threatens all three.

I remember presenting a customer service improvement strategy to a Sydney retail chain. The idea was simple: empower front-line staff to resolve customer complaints immediately, without manager approval, up to $500. The potential ROI was enormous. Customer satisfaction would increase. Resolution times would decrease. Staff would feel more trusted and engaged.

The idea died in committee because it didn't fit their existing approval workflows.

Individual Innovation vs. Collective Mediocrity

The companies that genuinely innovate understand a fundamental truth: innovation is an individual sport played in team environments.

3M gives employees 15% of their time to work on personal projects. Google famously did the same. These aren't group activities—they're individual pursuits supported by organisational culture.

The role of leadership isn't to manage innovation. It's to create conditions where innovative people can thrive.

This means hiring curious people. Giving them problems worth solving. Providing resources and removing obstacles. Then getting out of their way.

When you try to systematise innovation, you systematise out the very unpredictability that makes innovation valuable.

The Permission Problem

Australian businesses suffer from chronic permission-seeking behaviour. Everything requires approval. Every decision needs consensus. Every change must be committee-endorsed.

This cultural tendency toward collaborative decision-making—which serves us well in many contexts—becomes innovation cancer in corporate environments.

Real innovators don't ask permission. They identify problems and solve them. They apologise later if necessary, but they don't wait for approval to begin.

The most innovative companies I've worked with have cultures that reward intelligent risk-taking and tolerate intelligent failure. Effective communication training often helps teams navigate these cultural shifts more successfully.

What Actually Works: The Anti-Process Process

Forget the innovation labs and structured brainstorming sessions. Here's what actually generates breakthrough ideas:

Hire People Who Notice Things. Look for employees who question assumptions and spot inefficiencies. These are your innovation seeds.

Give Them Real Problems. Not theoretical challenges or academic exercises. Actual business problems that impact real customers and cost real money.

Remove Approval Barriers. Let people experiment with small budgets without requiring business cases. Make failure cheap and learning fast.

Protect Weird Ideas. When someone proposes something unusual, resist the urge to immediately explain why it won't work. Explore why it might work instead.

Measure Outcomes, Not Activities. Don't track how many ideas were generated or how many workshops were conducted. Track whether meaningful problems got solved.

The best innovation I've witnessed happened when a Adelaide manufacturing company's maintenance technician noticed their packaging line was jamming every Tuesday morning. Instead of reporting it through proper channels, he spent his lunch breaks investigating. Turned out the overnight cleaning crew was using the wrong solvent, which left residue that hardened overnight.

His unauthorised investigation saved the company $180,000 annually in downtime costs.

That's innovation. Not sticky notes and design thinking workshops.

Stop Innovating Innovation

The greatest innovation your company can implement is to stop trying to systematise innovation.

Remove the innovation committees. Cancel the brainstorming sessions. Stop measuring innovation metrics that encourage innovation theatre.

Instead, hire smart people with diverse backgrounds. Give them interesting problems. Remove bureaucratic obstacles. Reward intelligent risk-taking.

Innovation isn't a process. It's a culture.

And culture can't be workshopped into existence.

Most companies already have innovative people. They're just trapped in systems designed to prevent innovation. Personal development training can help individuals develop the confidence to challenge these systems constructively.

The solution isn't better innovation processes. It's fewer innovation processes and more trust in the people you've hired to solve problems.

Stop managing innovation and start enabling it.

After all, the best ideas often come from the most unexpected places—usually from people who weren't invited to the innovation workshop.

Further Reading: