Why Is Innovation a Dirty Word?
5 min read
Innovation, Corporate Strategy, Leadership, Culture, Transformation, R&D, Change
Many organisations say they want innovation, yet quietly avoid it. Without structure, leadership support, and permission to fail, innovation doesn’t thrive, it disappears.
Struggling to make innovation stick?
I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve been asked not to use the word innovation in a pitch, a presentation, or even my job title.
One senior executive once said to me, very matter-of-factly:
“People with ‘innovation’ in their title are the first out the door. Could you use ‘R&D’ instead?”
He wasn’t wrong. He even suggested flying under the radar if I wanted projects to survive.
For a while, companies loved innovation. They hired Chief Innovation Officers, set up labs, and launched internal programmes. Then the mood shifted. Innovation teams were rebranded, folded into other functions, or removed altogether under the logic that “everyone should be innovative.”
It sounds sensible. In reality, it rarely works.
Without structure, innovation suffocates.
Yes, innovation should influence everything a company does. But not everyone is an innovator, and without dedicated teams, funding, and explicit permission to take risks, bold ideas struggle to survive.
How many times have you had to fight for budget just to explore an idea?
How often has a promising concept had to operate quietly, hoping not to attract too much attention?
How many initiatives died early because they didn’t fit an existing model or forecast?
Most ambitious ideas don’t fail because they’re bad. They fail because they never get the space to breathe.
Privately, most boards understand the need for innovation. Ask them one-to-one and they’ll tell you exactly what kind of thinking the business needs to stay competitive. But in group settings, comfort tends to win over courage. Bold bets feel risky, even when standing still is riskier.
It’s why large organisations so often get disrupted by smaller, faster players with fewer constraints and less internal politics.
Books like New to Big and The Startup Way make one thing clear:
🚨 Without CEO support, innovation fails.
Even the best teams will hit a wall if leadership isn’t fully invested. At some point, a breakthrough idea needs funding, sponsorship, or simply permission to continue. Without senior backing, momentum stalls, often too late to recover.
The deeper issue is cultural.
Failure still isn’t part of corporate DNA. Innovation requires experimentation, and experimentation requires accepting that some things won’t work. Until failure is treated as learning rather than liability, innovation will always feel dangerous.
The alternative is slow atrophy.
The solution isn’t fewer ideas. It’s clearer frameworks, committed leadership, and environments where intelligent risk is encouraged rather than punished.
Because companies that stop innovating don’t stand still.
They fall behind.