In a landscape where AI is reshaping roles, compressing value chains, and democratising access to once-specialist tools, the imperative for human-led innovation has never been more urgent or more complex.
For executive leaders, the challenge is no longer whether to innovate, but how to do so systemically, simultaneously, and sustainably.
Innovation should be the oil that lubricates the corporate engine, and the fuel that drives it forward. It spans products, services, processes, and experiences. Yet too often, it’s treated as a siloed function, confined to labs, digital teams, or transformation offices, or even worse, as the exclusive territory of the executive team. Driving innovation in this way is risky because it leads to overlapping projects, tired teams, and ideas that never grow.
So how do you create a culture of innovation and then foster creativity without losing control? How do you scale innovation without saturating your organisation’s capacity for change?
The answer lies in treating innovation not as a mindset or a moment, but as a core enterprise capability that is designed, governed, and sustained.
Why Innovation is Now a Core Capability
Innovation is no longer the preserve of FTSE100 or Fortune 500 firms. It’s a business skill on par with finance, operations, and compliance. As AI and emerging technology take over tasks, human inventiveness sets people apart. To stay relevant, businesses need to keep coming up with, testing, and growing new ideas.
There are three things causing this change
• AI and robots: As machines take over tasks that can be predicted, human judgement and creativity become increasingly important.
• Constant change: Disruptions such as changes in regulations, shocks to the supply chain, or the arrival of new competitors imply that plans that don't change quickly become useless.
• Changing client expectations: From sustainability to providing more personalised customer experiences, companies need to keep pace with industry or customer expectations or change the market by coming up with new ideas.
And these aren’t temporary trends; they’re structural shifts that won’t reverse. In fact, the pace of change is likely to be exponentially faster year on year, which means innovation must be embedded, not bolted on.
Designing Innovation Into Your Organisation
To make innovation repeatable, scalable, and aligned, it must be designed into the organisation’s operating model. This calls for:
Structuring for agility with modular teams and adaptable models that can adapt to changes in many areas.
Governance that lets people try new things: Clear decision rights, review schedules, and the right level of governance that can stop time-wasting without repressing innovative freedom.
Giving the workforce the skills, resources, and support they need to do more than merely come up with ideas – they need to implement them too.
It's not enough to only do new things to be innovative. It’s about doing the right things, at the right time, in the right way, and building the capability to be able to do that repeatedly.
The Innovation Skills Gap
Many organisations aspire to innovate, yet few have built the internal muscle to do so consistently. The real constraint isn’t strategy or ambition. It’s skills.
To drive an innovation culture, you need to ensure that three “Must-Haves” are present within the organisation:
The ability to innovate by equipping your workforce with the skills, tools, and environment to think creatively.
The opportunity to innovate by making space for innovation alongside the day job.
The desire to innovate by fostering a culture that rewards curiosity, collaboration, and experimentation.
These enablers must be embedded across the enterprise, not just in HR or transformation teams. And they need to be supported across the business, such as through iterative funding models, IT shifting from gatekeeper to enabler and through a governance model encouraging learning as well as control.
Agile Innovation: Structuring for Scale
Agile innovation isn’t about speed alone. It’s about building a system that can sense, respond, and adapt, continuously and concurrently.
To manage innovation at scale, organisations must move from ad-hoc experimentation to structured capability involving:
Modular operating models: Teams from different departments that work together towards clear goals and have the freedom to do so under set limits.
Stage-gate frameworks: These are checkpoints that check the feasibility, desirability, and viability of projects to make sure they stay on track with goals and expectations.
Innovation governance: This requires clear responsibilities, decision-making rights, and escalation pathways that help innovation without making things more complicated.
Agile principles provide you with the freedom to encourage new ideas. But portfolio thinking is what makes it all work by making sure that new ideas are useful, can grow, and are in line with the company's goals.
Portfolio Thinking: Orchestrating Innovation
To keep things from getting out of hand, innovation needs to be managed like any portfolio of change, with a balance of risk, reward, and resource allocation.
Strategic orchestration: Make sure that projects are in line with corporate goals. Don't approach them as separate experiments.
Risk-reward balancing: Pair bold bets with incremental improvements. Innovation spans Product, Process, and Business Model—and falls into Incremental, Disruptive, or Radical categories.
Resource optimisation: Prevent duplication, team overload, and burnout of the organisation’s absorptive capacity.
And don’t be afraid to shut down projects that aren’t delivering. In today’s rush to “use” AI, too many initiatives burn through budgets without clear outcomes. Portfolio thinking helps you spot those early—and act decisively.
Case Study
At the National Bank of Abu Dhabi (now FAB UAE), I drove the transformation of banking operations. Wanting to create a culture of continuous improvement, we democratised business change into the workforce, building in time into the daily routines of the processing teams for innovation. This included the exploration of challenges and involvement in ideation, solutioning, and implementation. By building this into BAU and engaging the staff, we developed a culture within the business of innovation and betterment.
Culture Is the Enabler, Not the Whole Story
Culture is the soil in which innovation grows. It creates psychological safety, encourages cross-functional collaboration, and supports risk-taking. But culture alone won’t scale innovation.
Without structure, a culture of innovation can lead to chaos. Initiatives drift or distract from strategic goals. Resources compete, and ideas can stall at the concept stage.
To avoid disengagement, culture must be part of a system, connected to strategy, structure, skills, governance, and tools. When aligned, culture becomes a multiplier. When isolated, it becomes noise.
The Risks of Concurrent Innovation Strands
In theory, more new ideas should lead to more development. But in real life, uncoordinated efforts create too much change.
Some common risks are:
Resource dilution: too many people and not enough money;
Strategic misalignment: teams have different aims;
Initiative fatigue: people are tired of it and don't care.
Change saturation: operational risk and resistance
These risks typically show up in small ways, like pilots who are stuck, priorities that aren't clear, and innovation that is perceived as a distraction.
If this happens, it's time to stop and reset.
Absorptive Capacity: How Fast Can You Change?
Innovation is exciting, but it can also be exhausting. Leadership teams must ask: how much change can we realistically absorb?
Absorptive capacity is the ability to sense and interpret change signals; translate them into actionable innovation; and then deploy change without destabilising business as usual.
It’s not just about how fast you go; it’s also about rhythm. Some companies can swiftly adjust to change, while others need time to become used to it.
To boost your ability to change:
Plan your portfolio of innovation activity to avoid saturation.
Build the infrastructure for change: Invest in communication channels and support that helps people get things done.
Stay tuned into how your workforce is really feeling, using pulse surveys and feedback channels to spot issues early.
Give yourself some breathing room; time to think and put things together.
Align innovation cycles with the pace of business, making sure that delivery fits with planning windows and review cycles.
Governing Without Smothering
Senior teams often talk about the benefits of a great innovation culture, but they may fail to manage it effectively. Too many businesses ask people to be creative without putting in place the systems that will keep it going.
All that results in is a lot of ideas, projects that overlap, and teams that are worn out.
Inspiring innovation is easy. Getting the entire workforce to be enthusiastic is harder. You are always going to get some employees who just aren’t interested. That doesn’t mean that they are bad at their job, so keep trying to get them involved.
But sustaining an innovation culture is harder still. You must create a systematic, governed environment that both nurtures creativity while at the same time keeping it aligned and controlled.
Managing innovation in the workplace isn’t just about sparking ideas. It’s about staying focused while giving innovation room to breathe, without letting it run wild.
