Why Companies Say They Want Innovation — But Don’t Always Get It
Lessons from "Loonshots" (and what you can do to foster innovation)
Everyone talks about innovation, but few organizations actually create the conditions necessary to get it.
Why? Because the same systems that make companies efficient also quietly suffocate the very creativity they claim to value.
In “Loonshots”, Safi Bahcall describes two archetypes inside organizations:
Artists – the explorers: researchers, architects, tinkerers, and inventors chasing uncertain ideas.
Soldiers – the executors: teams who scale known ideas into reliable, revenue-generating products.
The problem isn’t that companies have Soldiers.
It’s that as companies grow, they often optimize everything around the Soldier mindset—and accidentally make the Artist mindset unsafe.
The real tension: how failure is treated
The core difference isn’t “creative vs not creative.” It’s the organizational meaning of failure.
In R&D, failure is expected—and often informative.
In execution, failure is costly—so it gets minimized.
When those norms spill into each other, something predictable happens:
People stop proposing risky ideas—not because they lack creativity, but because the career cost of being wrong becomes too high.
That’s how you end up with the familiar outcome:
Companies praise innovation in words, but punish it in incentives.
How do you keep ideas fresh inside environments built for predictability?
Bahcall argues that organizations need dedicated spaces for innovation—protected from day-to-day execution pressure—with strong bridges back to execution teams so the best ideas can scale.
In short:
Innovation teams should be measured on learning.
Execution teams should be measured on reliability.
When you confuse those scoreboards, you get the worst of both worlds: R&D becomes timid, and execution becomes chaotic.
Practical habits that keep the spark alive (even in execution teams)
Even without a formal formal “innovation lab,” there are “small levers” that change culture if leadership actually prioritizes them:
Engineer-led seminars – weekly rotating talks that share new concepts keep knowledge flowing.
Knowledge libraries – a strong collection of technical books and training material to pass down know-how
Conference paper reviews – ISSCC, APEC, etc. to bring in outside perspective.
20% time projects – side projects or friendly competitions can spark new ideas.
One of my favorite examples in an Analog Mixed Signal Design job: I once saw young engineers challenge each other to design a better bandgap reference.
The takeaway
Most companies don’t fail at innovation because they lack smart people.
They fail because they accidentally build systems where:
predictability is rewarded,
uncertainty is punished,
and “learning” is treated as a luxury.
If you want innovation, don’t just ask for ideas.
Build conditions where smart people can explore without betting their careers.
References:
Bahcall, S. (2019). Loonshots: How to nurture the crazy ideas that win wars, cure diseases, and transform industries. St. Martin’s Press.