Innovation is important in every industry, whether creating and developing new products and services, or improving your workflow. There is no one right way to innovate, but there are wrong ways. It’s easy to get stuck in a line of thinking or trying to control the process, making it more complex than it needs to be. We asked our Fast Company Impact Council members what common mistakes companies make when trying to innovate, and an alternative way to think about innovation. Just like the creative process, our members had unique understandings of what not to do, and how to do a better job. We share 18 of those inspirational ideas here.
1. DON’T LAYER INNOVATION WORK ON CURRENT WORK
The most common mistake is expecting your existing team to handle innovation on top of their daily workload. That rarely works. Operational tasks always win because they’re urgent and someone’s waiting on them. I see that all the time—an innovation initiative gets pushed to next sprint, then the one after that, until it quietly disappears. What actually works is giving a small group of people dedicated time where they’re not getting pulled into client deliverables or production issues. Start small, but give them the space to explore without being pulled back into the operational tasks. — Denis Danov, Dreamix
2. DON’T JUST RELY ONLY ON NEW TOOLS
We live in a moment where “innovation” has become a shorthand for AI, software, or digital transformation. When a process feels slow or teams feel disconnected, the corporate instinct is to reach for a new tool or platform. You must find the solution in the analog world before you can automate it. Real innovation isn’t measured by how much technology you deploy; it’s measured by the clarity of the outcome you achieve. Understand the “why” and the “how” of your challenge, then jump to the digital fix. — Logan Mulvey, GoDigital Music
3. CONSIDER MANAGEMENT
Companies often obsess over the innovation itself. But innovation isn’t just about the idea. It’s about how it’s managed. We all know the Innovator’s Dilemma, yet organizations still treat it as a choice between improving what exists or backing something new. The real challenge is doing both. Who leads the innovation and how it changes the organization matters just as much as the idea itself. — James Greenfield, Koto
4. GO BEYOND MAKING IT A STANDALONE FUNCTION
A powerful way to accelerate innovation is to move beyond treating it as a standalone function or destination. Dedicated teams can spark early wins and build trust, but the real unlock is shifting to a hub model that taps into the broader organization’s talent and assets while still moving with speed and creativity. Unite business and technology and pair “historians” who carry deep institutional knowledge with “challengers” who question assumptions. Together they reimagine work in ways both bold and viable. Innovation stops being a special project when you tie experimentation to real business priorities. It becomes how your company operates. — Adam L’Italien, Liberty Mutual Insurance
5. SET CLEAR GUARDRAILS
A common mistake companies make when trying to innovate is failing to set clear guardrails—and even more importantly, failing to communicate them. In the rush to keep up with market noise or competitive pressure, leaders can feel compelled to “innovate for innovation’s sake.” But without a strategic framework, that urgency often creates more risk than reward. AI is a perfect example. Without clear policies, employees may unintentionally share sensitive data with unvetted tools or platforms with murky data practices. The intention is productivity; the outcome can be exposure. — Melissa Puls, Ivanti
6. MAKE TIME FOR IT
They never carve out real time for it. Innovation lives on every company’s priority list, but it’s the first thing that gets eaten by the inevitable onslaught of short-term, urgent tasks. The fix is protection. If you actually want to innovate, you have to defend the time for it the way you’d defend a client deliverable. Block it, staff it, make someone accountable for it. — Lindsey Witmer Collins, WLCM Software Studio and Scribbly Books
7. DON’T MAKE ASSUMPTIONS
A common mistake is assuming they already know what customers want and moving too quickly into solution building. Too often, and especially in academia, innovators advance a technology without rigorously validating whether the problem they’re trying to solve is real, urgent, and shared by enough customers. It is amazing what innovators learn via a disciplined customer‑discovery process. That upfront rigor saves enormous time and resources and dramatically increases the odds that an innovation will find meaningful product‑market fit. — Christy Wyskiel, Johns Hopkins Technology Ventures
8. MANAGE INNOVATION AS A PORTFOLIO
Innovation does not come from removing constraints; often the opposite is true. When the boundaries are explicit, teams know where to focus their creativity. For that reason, I believe innovation should be managed as a portfolio. A practical rule of thumb is 70-20-10. About 70% of effort should go to improving the core. Around 20% should focus on adjacent opportunities, where the organization can innovate by leveraging its existing capabilities. The remaining 10% should be dedicated to more disruptive ideas that stay on strategy addressing fundamental customer needs, even if they challenge the enterprise model. — Pierre Le Manh, Project Management Institute
9. IT DOES NOT HAVE TO BE GROUNDBREAKING
One common mistake is assuming innovation has to mean something entirely new or groundbreaking. In reality, some of the most effective innovation comes from improving what already exists by listening closely to customers and users and understanding the real problem you’re trying to solve. When companies ground innovation in data and user insights, they tend to arrive at solutions that are both more practical and more impactful. — Muneer Panjwani, Engage for Good
10. MAINTAIN DIVERSITY OF THOUGHT
I think often companies get too many like-minded people looking at the problem. Diversity in thought is probably one of the greatest strengths a company might have. Many companies focus on “diversity” as a term and goal, but the reality is that they hire people who think alike. This is reinforced by their HR departments, managers, and leadership team, most of whom likely were hired and who get along because they think alike. Deliberately looking for people who think differently can help create more innovative approaches. — Eric Basu, Haiku, Inc.
11. INNOVATION EQUALS FEATURES
A lot of companies confuse innovation with a long list of features. The result is a roadmap that’s broad but not bold. Busy but not differentiated. To really innovate in a way that moves the needle for your customers, you need a clear North Star. Ask yourself, “What outcome does the customer actually want to achieve?” Then focus ruthlessly, align the organization to that strategy, and have the courage to say no to everything that doesn’t serve it. — Chris Ball, 6sense
12. DON’T CHASE SHORT-TERM WINS
It’s easy to get stuck chasing short-term wins, but true innovation requires transformative ideas. We believe that purpose without innovation is just noise. Focus on customer-centricity by asking what keeps customers up at night. Collaboration across disciplines is essential, and we celebrate experimentation. That means embracing failure, not fearing it. Balancing short-term goals with bold, forward-thinking strategies helps set trends, not follow them. — Yoonie Joung, Samsung Electronics America
13. UNDERSTAND CUSTOMER NEEDS
A common mistake is trying to innovate and scale too quickly and not understanding customer or market requirements. Innovation isn’t just about being first—it’s about moving intentionally and validating your product or offering often. Successful companies align innovation with their mission, defining clear and strategic milestones to build the company, and pivoting along the way to accommodate changing market conditions. To scale, companies must gain credibility and trust with their customers, showing that the value proposition holds true. Becoming an industry leader takes discipline, navigating challenges, and differentiating yourself. — David Klanecky, Cirba Solutions
14. AVOID GETTING STUCK IN POSSIBILITIES
In the creative practices, especially, it is easy to get stuck in the exploration of possibilities. There is a natural gap between the prospect of value creation and actually seeing that value creation materialize. It’s important to be rigorous in understanding how to navigate that gap, so that you make a tangible impact in a timely fashion. — Mitch Smith, MG2
15. MOONSHOTS AREN’T THE ONLY OUTCOMES
A common mistake is treating innovation like it only counts if it is a dramatic moonshot. This can stall progress because of the fear of starting unless a groundbreaking outcome is guaranteed. A better approach is to value small, steady improvements that remove friction for customers and improve work for employees. Incremental steps create learning, momentum, and shared confidence. Over time, those steps compound and unlock bigger breakthroughs because the organization has built the habits, systems, and trust needed to take smarter risks. Instead of waiting for a single leap, focus on building the stairs and bring people along as you climb. — Mike Sewell, Gresham Smith
16. FOCUS ON THE WHY
The most frequent error is obsessing over the “what”—the shiny product or the logo—while ignoring the “why.” Companies often innovate for visibility rather than for meaningful weight. Instead, use the FACTION methodology: Anchor 70% of your innovation in rigorous market “fact” and 30% in captivating cultural “fiction.” Innovation shouldn’t start with a space or a product; it should end with one. Focus on architecting the soul of the brand first. If your innovation doesn’t leave the community better than you found it, you aren’t innovating; you’re just taking up space. — Sooyoung Cho, the bread and butter brand consulting LLC
17. DEMAND COHERENCE
The biggest mistake I see is companies launching massive innovation programs without coherence. They cast a wide net, ask every team to “figure out AI,” for example, and end up with a hundred experiments and zero clarity. Coherence is the new agility. A team of three people with a clear vision can outpace a team of 3,000 without one. Start with a small, autonomous group. Give them permission to challenge every assumption, and validate real hypotheses quickly. Then cascade what works to the rest of the organization in increments. Vision without validation is just a pipe dream, and scale without coherence is just expensive chaos. — Peter Smart, Fantasy
18. FOCUS ON COMPETITOR ACTIONS
When disruption rules the day, many companies only look outwardly at what their competitors are doing and neglect the importance of looking inward to their teams. Innovation succeeds only when team members feel informed, energized, and intrinsically motivated to tackle the challenges presented to them. Innovation should no longer be confined to a certain division in the company. Instead, it should be encouraged to thrive organically from people at all levels of the organization. — Rakia Reynolds, Actum
