Innovation Theater

The hackathon produced 30 ideas. Leadership applauded. None were funded. The innovation lab has a ping pong table, a slide deck, and no budget for production.

CB Insights analysed 101 startup post-mortems. The top reason for failure was not lack of ideas. It was building products nobody needed. Large organisations replicate this pattern internally: they celebrate ideation while starving execution.

Innovation theatre gives the audience the feeling of progress without the cost of change. It is comfortable. It photographs well. It changes nothing.

Real innovation is boring. It is funded experiments with measurable hypotheses and permission to fail visibly, not just safely.