Innovation for the Fatigued

Innovation for the Fatigued Plot Summary

Introduction

Innovation has become one of the most overused terms in modern business vocabulary. Organizations worldwide spend trillions of dollars annually on innovation initiatives, yet many struggle with diminishing returns and growing fatigue among their employees. While innovation is universally hailed as critical for survival and success, the way we approach it has become increasingly shallow and performative. This paradox forms the central challenge addressed throughout these pages. By distinguishing between "shallow innovation" (focused on novelty and appearances) and "deep innovation" (centered on meaningful impact and unique approaches), we can begin to understand why so many innovation efforts fail to deliver substantive results. The journey ahead examines how organizations can move beyond innovation theater and fatigue toward cultures that nurture genuine creativity. Through careful analysis of psychological safety, diversity of thought, purposeful ambition, and temporal awareness, we'll discover how to tap into the vast cognitive surplus that exists in every organization but remains largely untapped due to flawed approaches and misguided assumptions about what innovation truly requires.

Chapter 1: The Crisis of Shallow Innovation in Modern Organizations

Innovation has transformed from a rare, meaningful event into an everyday buzzword that has lost much of its power. The modern business world worships innovation as a tribal god, yet this worship has become increasingly ritualistic rather than substantive. We now live in what might be called the golden age of innovation chatter, with hundreds of books published monthly on the topic, endless conferences, and a constant stream of articles and social media content. The problem isn't a lack of discussion about innovation but rather the quality of that discussion. Most innovation literature has become remarkably repetitive and standardized. The advice follows predictable patterns: look outside your industry, listen to diverse groups, experiment with customers, take chances, learn to love failure. The examples cited are equally predictable, with the same handful of companies—Apple, Google, Amazon, Tesla—referenced endlessly. This standardization extends to innovation rankings, where the same companies consistently appear at the top, regardless of who conducts the assessment. This shallow approach to innovation has significant consequences. The term "innovation" is now applied to everything from the most minor product improvements to truly revolutionary developments. This dilution has created an environment where innovation fatigue is a normal reaction. People aren't opposed to innovation itself; they're exhausted by recycled clichés and superficial thinking that masquerades as innovation wisdom. As innovation talk has become more superficial, we've seen a narrowing of innovation thinking, with organizations focusing more on following whatever buzzword is currently popular than on achieving meaningful impact. The greatest danger lies in how this shallow innovation mindset wastes the tremendous cognitive surplus that exists in organizations. Every company has highly educated employees equipped with powerful technology and access to vast information resources. Yet instead of harnessing this potential for meaningful innovation, many organizations squander it on performative innovation exercises or incremental improvements that barely qualify as innovative. The result is a growing disconnect between the resources devoted to innovation and the impact achieved. This crisis of shallow innovation requires a fundamental rethinking of how we approach creativity and change in organizations. It demands moving beyond the superficial narratives promoted by what might be called the "innovation industry"—the consultants, authors, and conference organizers who benefit from perpetuating a particular vision of innovation that often prioritizes style over substance. Only by recognizing the difference between shallow and deep innovation can organizations begin to build cultures capable of meaningful, impactful creativity.

Chapter 2: How Ideas Die: Understanding Innovation Fatigue

Ideas rarely die from active opposition. The common assumption that innovation is hindered primarily by people who actively "don't get it" misses the more subtle and pervasive ways that creativity is quashed in organizations. Most ideas perish not from criticism but from neglect—the silent killer of innovation. A yawn, a lack of eye contact, or a vague "I'll think about it" can be more devastating to a budding idea than outright rejection. This passive killing of ideas manifests in countless small interactions throughout organizations. When someone excitedly shares a new concept only to be met with indifference or minimal engagement, the message is clear even without explicit rejection. These micro-behaviors—slight shifts in body language, momentary expressions of boredom, or perfunctory responses—create what might be understood through the lens of "broken windows theory." Just as neighborhoods decline when small signs of disorder are ignored, innovation cultures deteriorate when small signs of disrespect toward ideas go unaddressed. Organizations often fail to recognize how these seemingly minor interactions shape their innovation climate. In one revealing case, a chemical company launched an ideas competition that generated over 700 submissions. When participants received automated, impersonal rejections—five identical emails for five different submissions in one instance—the message was clear: the company viewed ideas as mere entries in a spreadsheet rather than meaningful contributions from engaged employees. Similarly, in another organization, executives sat stone-faced during idea presentations, offering neither encouragement nor constructive feedback, effectively signaling that the exercise was merely performative. What makes this dynamic particularly insidious is that most people believe they're excellent at recognizing creative ideas when they see them. Research consistently shows that around 80 percent of people consider themselves more creative than average, and an even higher percentage believe they can easily identify creative ideas. Yet innovation history demonstrates the opposite—human beings are notoriously bad at identifying innovative ideas upon first exposure. Almost every significant innovation was initially dismissed or underestimated, often by experts in the relevant field. This blindness to innovation stems partly from what might be called the curse of expertise. As people become experts in a domain, they develop strong mental models about what works and what doesn't. These models, while valuable in many contexts, can create resistance to ideas that challenge established thinking. This explains why industry incumbents often fail to recognize disruptive innovations until it's too late—their expertise becomes a liability when confronting truly novel approaches. Understanding these dynamics is essential for addressing innovation fatigue. Organizations don't need more innovation theater—the performative workshops, competitions, and initiatives that signal innovation without creating the conditions for it to flourish. Instead, they need to recognize that the number one requirement for innovation isn't ideas but a supportive culture—one that addresses the subtle ways ideas die and creates an environment where creativity can thrive.

Chapter 3: Building Cultures of Respect, Reciprocity and Responsibility

Creating a genuine innovation culture requires thinking like a farmer rather than a hunter. Farmers understand that crops need continuous tending—preparing the soil, protecting seedlings, and nurturing growth over time. Similarly, innovation cultures must be cultivated through consistent care rather than sporadic harvesting expeditions. This agricultural metaphor highlights a fundamental truth: innovation cultures are living systems that require ongoing nurturing. At the heart of this nurturing process lies psychological safety—the shared belief that team members won't be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, or concerns. Google's extensive research through Project Aristotle identified psychological safety as perhaps the single most important predictor of team effectiveness. Teams with high psychological safety demonstrate "equality in distribution of conversational turn-taking," meaning everyone contributes and everyone listens. Without this foundation, even the most brilliant ideas remain unexpressed. Building on psychological safety, deep innovation cultures exhibit four critical values that can be remembered as the "four Rs": respect, reciprocity, responsibility, and reflection. Respect forms the basic building block, creating an environment where both people and their ideas are valued. This doesn't mean avoiding criticism—quite the opposite. In healthy innovation cultures, engagement with ideas through thoughtful critique is itself a form of respect. What's destructive isn't criticism but indifference, the passive killing of ideas through lack of engagement. Reciprocity represents the understanding that innovation requires both give and take. Organizations cannot simply demand innovation without providing the necessary support and resources. Many companies make the mistake of increasing innovation pressure without corresponding increases in time, budget, or encouragement. This imbalance creates innovation stress, where employees feel they cannot possibly meet expectations with the resources provided. Deep innovation cultures ensure that demands are matched with support. Responsibility extends beyond formal innovation roles to create a culture where everyone feels ownership of the innovation process. This includes the responsibility to speak honestly about innovation challenges rather than merely nodding along with superficial innovation talk. In one revealing case, a Danish technology company discovered that forcing everyone to participate in innovation activities actually decreased engagement. When participation became optional, those who opted in did so with greater energy, while those who opted out still supported innovation efforts in other ways. Reflection completes the foundation by ensuring the organization continuously examines its assumptions and practices. Without reflection, innovation efforts can become rigid and disconnected from purpose. Organizations that sustain innovation over time, like IBM through its many transformations, demonstrate the capacity to question even their most fundamental assumptions about what business they're in and what capabilities matter most. This willingness to unlearn—to let go of past success formulas—is essential for ongoing innovation. Together, these four Rs create a culture where innovation can flourish naturally rather than being forced through artificial programs and initiatives. They address the root causes of innovation fatigue by creating an environment where ideas are respected, properly resourced, widely owned, and continuously refined through thoughtful reflection. This foundation enables organizations to move beyond shallow innovation toward deeper, more meaningful creativity.

Chapter 4: Harnessing Imagination and Curiosity Beyond Comfort Zones

Imagination represents the deepest level of creative thinking, yet it receives surprisingly little attention in serious business discussions. While innovation consultants and business leaders eagerly embrace terms like "agility" and "disruption," many visibly recoil when imagination enters the conversation. This reaction reveals a fundamental misunderstanding: imagination isn't a childish indulgence but the essential foundation of all meaningful innovation. Every significant breakthrough began as an imaginative leap that seemed impossible until it wasn't. Understanding imagination requires recognizing the layered nature of human thinking. Drawing on Daniel Kahneman's distinction between fast, intuitive System 1 thinking and slower, analytical System 2 thinking, we can visualize creative thought as extending even deeper. Most thinking in organizations is dominated by routines and established patterns—the mental shortcuts that help us navigate familiar situations efficiently. When faced with more complex problems, we engage analytical thinking, applying known frameworks and logical processes to find solutions. True imagination, however, requires digging deeper still. It means moving beyond both routine responses and logical analysis to access a level of thinking where previously unconnected ideas can combine in novel ways. This is difficult precisely because our minds naturally gravitate toward familiar patterns and established knowledge. The deeper we go into imaginative thinking, the more we must work against our cognitive defaults and the organizational structures that reinforce them. This explains why comfort zones present such a challenge to innovation. Organizations naturally create environments where similar people with similar backgrounds develop similar ways of thinking. Engineers eat lunch with other engineers, marketers cluster with other marketers, and hierarchical structures reinforce these divisions. Even when organizations claim to value creativity, they often support only ideas that align with existing competencies and assumptions. True imagination requires breaking these patterns through deliberate practices that push beyond comfort zones. Play represents one powerful but underutilized tool for accessing deeper imagination. Despite lip service to its importance, play is often dismissed as unserious in corporate settings. Yet play—defined as exploratory activity that follows only its own internal logic—creates precisely the conditions needed for imagination to flourish. When people engage in play, they temporarily suspend normal constraints and explore possibilities that might otherwise be dismissed as impractical. This suspension of judgment creates space for truly novel combinations and connections to emerge. Equally important is curiosity—the drive to explore and understand beyond what's immediately necessary. Research by Francesca Gino found that only 24 percent of people regularly feel curious at work, while 70 percent report organizational barriers to asking questions. This curiosity crisis severely limits innovation potential. Organizations can combat this by deliberately designing for curiosity: bringing diverse inputs into the organization, incentivizing exploration, and even disincentivizing comfort by rotating people through different roles and challenges. The imagination premium—the competitive advantage derived from accessing deeper levels of creative thinking—becomes increasingly valuable as other advantages diminish. In an age where data analytics and artificial intelligence become commoditized, imagination remains distinctly human and difficult to replicate. Organizations that can mine this resource effectively gain access to ideas that transcend incremental improvements and create entirely new possibilities. This requires not just occasional brainstorming sessions but a fundamental commitment to nurturing imagination as a core capability.

Chapter 5: Embracing Diversity for Meaningful Innovation Impact

Innovation thinking suffers from a troubling bias toward a narrow demographic profile. From Silicon Valley to corporate boardrooms, innovation has often been portrayed as primarily the domain of young, white, male technologists from elite educational backgrounds. This skewed perspective isn't merely a social justice issue—it represents a massive innovation blind spot that limits both the problems addressed and the solutions considered. The innovation landscape reveals clear patterns of privilege. Venture capital disproportionately flows to founders who fit a particular profile, while the achievements of innovators from diverse backgrounds often go unrecognized. Consider Gertrude Belle Elion, who developed the first treatments for leukemia, created immune-suppressive agents that revolutionized organ transplantation, and contributed to breakthrough medications for herpes, HIV/AIDS, gout, malaria, and meningitis. Despite winning a Nobel Prize, she remains virtually unknown to the general public, while male innovators with far less impact enjoy widespread recognition. This bias extends beyond gender to encompass multiple dimensions of diversity. The funding patterns that favor certain demographic profiles have created a technology landscape focused on solving problems primarily experienced by young, affluent men. The proliferation of food delivery apps, dating platforms, and gaming technologies reflects this skewed innovation focus. Meanwhile, problems affecting other demographic groups—from single mothers to the elderly, from rural communities to those with disabilities—receive comparatively little attention despite representing enormous potential markets and opportunities for meaningful impact. The business case for diversity in innovation is compelling. McKinsey research shows that companies with greater gender diversity outperform peers by 21 percent, while those with greater ethnic diversity outperform by 33 percent. These dramatic differences stem from the fundamental nature of innovation itself. Innovation thrives on cognitive diversity—differences in perspective and information processing styles that allow teams to approach problems from multiple angles and generate more varied solutions. Effective innovation requires not just diversity in representation but also what might be called "respectful disharmony"—the ability to engage in productive conflict while maintaining mutual respect. Research consistently shows that teams with some degree of conflict and constraint actually produce more creative outcomes than those characterized by uniform agreement. The key is creating conditions where different perspectives can be expressed and engaged with productively rather than suppressed or ignored. Cultural brokers play a crucial role in this process. These individuals, who can translate between different perspectives and help bridge divides, significantly enhance creative performance in diverse teams. They might translate between technical and non-technical team members, between different generational perspectives, or across various other dimensions of diversity. Organizations often fail to recognize the importance of these informal translation roles until they're lost, as one software company discovered when a junior programmer who had effectively bridged the gap between management and the development team departed. The ultimate goal is moving from diversity as a checkbox exercise to diversity as a driver of meaningful innovation impact. This requires recognizing that innovation isn't a universal good but rather a process directed toward particular problems and benefiting particular groups. By embracing diverse perspectives, organizations can expand their innovation focus beyond the narrow concerns that currently dominate to address more significant challenges affecting broader segments of humanity. In a world where 800,000 children still die annually from diarrhea despite our technological advances, the need for more inclusive innovation priorities could not be more clear.

Chapter 6: Creating Resilient Innovation through Purpose and Courage

Innovation discourse has increasingly become disconnected from meaning and purpose. When innovation can refer to anything from a revolutionary medical breakthrough to a slightly different flavor of Pop-Tarts, the term loses its power to inspire and guide meaningful action. This emptying of meaning contributes significantly to innovation fatigue, as people struggle to find value in activities labeled as "innovation" that seem trivial or pointless. The problem manifests in what might be called "innovation bullshit"—a term that philosopher Harry Frankfurt would recognize not as mere falsehood but as language utterly disconnected from a concern with truth. Innovation consultants and speakers often drape themselves in innovation terminology without coherence or substance, using contradictory examples and misrepresenting theories to create an impression of expertise. This superficial approach treats innovation as a status marker rather than a meaningful pursuit, further alienating those expected to participate in innovation activities. Reconnecting innovation to purpose requires moving beyond vague exhortations like "excellence" toward specific, meaningful goals. Companies like Bempu, which creates low-cost temperature monitoring bracelets to prevent infant hypothermia in developing countries, demonstrate how a clear purpose—"Simply saving lives"—can energize innovation efforts. Similarly, Anti-Germ, a food safety company, found that its work on Aquatabs water purification tablets for developing countries created a powerful sense of meaning that strengthened its overall innovation culture. Innovation ambition plays a crucial role in this reconnection to purpose. Organizations need to find the right balance of challenge—enough to energize but not so much as to overwhelm. Too little stress creates strategic boredom, while too much leads to strategic burnout. The sweet spot lies in having sufficient tension to create engagement without pushing people toward fatigue or cynicism. Leaders must communicate clear, meaningful innovation ambitions aligned with the organization's purpose rather than vague demands for more "disruption" or "transformation." Courage represents another essential element of resilient innovation cultures. This includes the courage to allow employees to take initiative without excessive permission-seeking, the courage to occasionally say "no" to innovation itself (creating space for renewal), and the courage to govern for long-term innovation rather than short-term metrics. These forms of courage help create an environment where innovation can be both ambitious and sustainable rather than exhausting and performative. One counterintuitive example of courage involves a CEO who declared a company-wide moratorium on innovation activities. Rather than killing creativity, this temporary pause allowed people to catch up on accumulated work, reduced pressure, and ultimately led to greater energy and better ideas when innovation activities resumed. This approach recognizes that innovation isn't something that must happen constantly but rather something that benefits from rhythmic engagement—periods of intense focus balanced with periods of rest and reflection. The ultimate goal is resilience—the capacity to sustain meaningful innovation over time rather than chasing fads or burning out. Organizations like NASA demonstrate this resilience through their combination of grand purpose (exploring space), long-term thinking (projects spanning decades), and practical problem-solving (like the famous Apollo 13 CO2 scrubber improvisation). By grounding innovation in meaningful purpose, appropriate ambition, and various forms of courage, organizations can create innovation cultures that energize rather than exhaust, that create impact rather than merely novelty.

Chapter 7: Managing the Multiple Tempos of Innovation

Innovation operates according to multiple rhythms and tempos, not a single speed. While innovation discourse often emphasizes velocity—celebrating slogans like "Move fast and break things!"—the reality is far more complex. Different types of innovation require different temporal approaches, and organizations that fail to recognize this diversity of innovation times often undermine their own creative potential. The pressure for speed stems partly from the energy that velocity brings. When people feel momentum, they're more likely to embrace new ideas and approaches. Some leaders attempt to create this energy through crisis narratives, invoking metaphors like the "burning platform" to signal that business as usual is no longer viable. While such approaches can be effective in creating immediate action, they can't be sustained indefinitely without creating fatigue and cynicism. The wise leader recognizes that innovation requires a toolbox of different temporal approaches rather than a single speed. Agile methods represent one important tempo in this toolbox. These approaches emphasize quick bursts of activity with continuous feedback and reassessment, compressing development cycles from months to weeks or even days. The power of these compressed timeframes lies in how they change assumptions and reduce the cost of experimentation. With less time to second-guess decisions and less at stake in each iteration, people become more action-focused and willing to try unorthodox approaches. Organizations that introduce agile methods often see increased engagement with innovation, even among those not directly involved in the new processes. Equally important are moments—brief but powerful instances that communicate values and priorities. Leaders who pay attention to these moments can significantly influence innovation culture through small but meaningful actions. This might involve publicly celebrating a failed experiment that yielded valuable learning, pointing out specific examples of desired behavior, or creating memorable experiences that demonstrate commitment to innovation principles. As Daniel Coyle argues in The Culture Code, cultures are built through small, consistent signals rather than grand pronouncements. At the opposite temporal extreme lie the long slogs—innovation journeys measured in years or decades rather than days or weeks. Many of history's most transformative innovations required extended development periods before achieving success. The internet evolved over nearly 40 years from early packet-switching research to mainstream adoption. Xerography (dry photocopying) took 17 years from patent to commercial success. Organizations focused exclusively on quick wins miss these potentially massive opportunities. Patient capital—the willingness to invest in long-term innovation—remains essential despite its rarity in contemporary business. Equally underappreciated is the power of pauses—deliberate breaks from innovation activity. Just as the brain needs periods of rest to process information and generate insights, organizations benefit from rhythmic engagement with innovation rather than constant pressure. Strategic pauses allow people to catch up on accumulated work, reflect on previous innovation efforts, and return to creative activities with renewed energy. This creates what professor Claes Gustafsson called "idiergy"—the energy generated by separation and breaks, as opposed to the synergy created by combination. Designing for slack represents another temporal consideration. Organizations need to create space for the subconscious mind to operate—the in-between times when breakthrough insights often emerge. This means moving beyond a mindset where slack equals waste and inefficiency to recognize that without space to think imaginatively, organizations waste the cognitive surplus they need to compete effectively. Practical approaches include limiting overtime, discouraging after-hours emails, and even encouraging napping. The ultimate goal is an innovation culture attuned to its own rhythms—one that mixes speedy spurts with patient projects, takes breaks when needed, and increases tempo at the right moments. Like a conductor, leaders must understand both the score and the musicians, creating a rhythm that allows for both the slow movements and the occasional fortissimo. Only by embracing this temporal diversity can organizations sustain meaningful innovation without succumbing to fatigue.

Summary

The journey from shallow to deep innovation requires fundamental shifts in how organizations approach creativity and change. Moving beyond the superficial narratives promoted by the innovation industry demands recognizing that innovation isn't primarily about following formulas or mimicking celebrated companies. Instead, it requires building cultures where ideas can flourish through respect, reciprocity, responsibility, and reflection. These foundations enable organizations to tap into their vast cognitive surplus—the untapped creative potential that exists in every workplace but remains largely dormant due to flawed approaches. The path forward lies in embracing the full complexity of innovation rather than reducing it to simplistic narratives. This means valuing imagination as our most precious resource in an age of artificial intelligence and automation. It requires embracing diversity not as a checkbox exercise but as the essential fuel for meaningful creativity. It demands connecting innovation to purpose and having the courage to occasionally say "no" to innovation theater. And it necessitates understanding that innovation operates according to multiple rhythms and tempos, not a single speed. By addressing these dimensions thoughtfully and honestly, organizations can move beyond innovation fatigue toward cultures capable of sustained, meaningful creativity—the kind that solves significant problems rather than merely generating novelty for its own sake.

About Author

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Alf Rehn

Alf Rehn is a Finnish professor, author and speaker based in Finland. He currently holds the Chair of Management and Organization at Åbo Akademi University in Finland. Rehn works as a columnist, and sits on the board of directors for several companies, including Veikkaus.Rehn was listed as #13 on the 2009 Thinkers 50, in the "Up and Coming Business Thinkers” list. He was listed for a second time 2011.

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