“What innovation frameworks do you use?”
That was the question a prospective client asked me in a meeting earlier today. It’s a fair question — after all, frameworks are comforting. They promise structure, predictability, and a proven path to success. But as the discussion unfolded, I realised something: many organisations cling to frameworks like scaffolding, hoping they’ll hold everything together. Yet they forget about the foundation — principles.
Frameworks are tools; principles are the bedrock. Frameworks give you instructions, but principles give you the freedom to adapt, innovate, and solve problems in a way that fits your unique context. They’re the difference between painting by numbers and creating a masterpiece.
In that moment, I saw the real issue: innovation shouldn’t be about fitting into someone else’s template. It should be about knowing what truly matters and building from there. That’s why, when asked about my innovation process, I answered with something that might seem radical: “I don’t have a process. I have a toolbox and a set of principles.”
This post is about those principles. Ten foundational ideas that can elevate your innovation efforts — whether you’re launching a new product, solving a stubborn problem, or trying to reinvent how your team works. These aren’t abstract concepts; they’re actionable, rooted in real-world successes, and built to drive outcomes.
If you’re ready to move beyond frameworks and start building on something solid, here are 10 principles that will guide your innovation efforts:
Start With the Problem, Not the Solution — The best innovations don’t come from chasing trends; they come from solving meaningful problems.
Value Realisation: The End Goal Is Impact — Innovation without measurable value is just noise. Define success before you build.
Embrace Iterative Learning: Small Bets, Big Insights — Waiting for the perfect solution slows you down. Test, learn, and adapt fast.
Adaptive Risk Management: Don’t Fear Risk, Manage It —Don’t Fear Risk, Manage It — Risk is inevitable, but how you handle it determines whether your innovation thrives or stalls.
Align Innovation With Strategic Priorities — The best ideas don’t exist in a vacuum. They reinforce your strengths and long-term goals.
Cross-Functional Collaboration: Stop Treating Teams Like Silos — Real innovation happens when diverse perspectives collide. Bring teams together early.
Systems Thinking: Build Innovation Into the Organisation — Innovation isn’t a one-off effort; it’s a repeatable, scalable system that must be embedded.
Speed Through Simplicity: Cut the Bureaucracy — Complexity slows innovation. The fastest teams remove friction and focus on execution.
Psychological Safety: Make It Safe to Fail — Fear kills innovation. If your team is afraid to take risks, they’ll never build anything bold.
Balance Core and Transformational Innovation — Incremental improvements sustain today, but breakthrough ideas shape the future. Do both.
1. Start With the Problem, Not the Solution
Many organisations start with solutions, not problems. They chase the latest tech trends, hoping to stumble upon innovation. But real progress happens when you begin with the problem — deeply understanding it before jumping to solutions.
“Fall in love with the problem, not the solution.” — Uri Levine, Co-founder of Waze
Take Michelin, for example. They saw a specific issue in the industrial and construction sectors: downtime caused by tyre punctures and safety concerns on job sites. The problem was clear, and the stakes were high — every hour of downtime cost companies money and productivity.
Instead of developing a generic tyre product or jumping to flashy tech for the sake of it, Michelin focused on the root issue. They designed airless tyres to withstand the harshest conditions while eliminating the risk of punctures. This wasn’t just innovation for its own sake — it was innovation with purpose.
Action Step:
Spend time with your customers, not in a focus group or a meeting room, but in their world. Watch how they use (or don’t use) your products. Ask them what frustrates them, not just with your offerings but in their daily lives. Look for the pain points they might not even realise they have.
Remember:
The best solutions don’t come from brainstorming sessions or frameworks. They come from truly understanding the problem. When you get this right, the solution often reveals itself.
2. Value Realisation: The End Goal Is Impact
Innovation without impact is just noise. The flashy features and the clever tech — none of it matters if it doesn’t deliver measurable value to your customers and for your business.
Walmart nailed this with their grocery delivery strategy. They didn’t just copy the competition or tack on a delivery service to keep up with trends. Instead, they used their greatest strength — their physical store network — to create a same-day grocery delivery system. This wasn’t about following the market; it was about solving a real problem for their customers: convenience. The result? Walmart transformed customer loyalty and fortified its market position by doing what mattered most.
There’s a trap most organisations fall into: they mistake activity for progress. Launching something doesn’t mean it’s valuable. And pursuing innovation without a clear understanding of what “value” means is just an expensive exercise in hope.
Action Step:
Define value upfront. Ask two questions:
“What specific problem are we solving for our customers, and how will this solution tangibly improve their experience, outcomes, or satisfaction?”
“How does this solution align with our strategic business goals, and what measurable impact will it have on revenue, costs, customer retention, or competitive advantage?”
Suppose you can’t answer these questions with clarity and confidence; pause. Refocus. Value should be the North Star guiding every decision you make.
Remember:
Measurable impact isn’t optional. It’s the only thing that separates innovation from irrelevance. Focus on delivering real value, and everything else will follow.
3. Embrace Iterative Learning: Small Bets, Big Insights
Perfection is a myth, and waiting for it can kill innovation. The most successful teams don’t sit around crafting the “ideal” solution. They move quickly, run experiments, and adapt based on their learning. Every small bet is a chance to uncover insights that refine the next move.
“The best way to predict the future is to create it.” — Peter Drucker
Take Lululemon’s approach to product development. Instead of betting big on massive rollouts, they test small changes with real customers. Whether tweaking designs, introducing new materials, or experimenting with limited releases, they gather feedback early and often. This strategy minimises risk, accelerates learning, and ensures they’re constantly moving closer to what customers actually want.
Here’s the mistake too many teams make: they aim for certainty before taking action. They spend months planning, only to find out later that their assumptions were wrong. Iterative learning flips this — making every step a learning opportunity rather than a final gamble.
Action Step:
Pick one small experiment this week. What’s the fastest, cheapest way to test an idea? Run a prototype. Try an A/B test. Launch a feature to a limited audience. The goal isn’t perfection; it’s actionable feedback.
Pro Tip:
Focus on learning over success. Even a “failed” experiment teaches you something valuable. Capture what worked, what didn’t, and what needs to change. Then, iterate.
Remember:
The path to innovation isn’t a straight line — it’s a series of loops. The faster you run them, the quicker you grow. Small bets drive big insights, and big insights lead to meaningful breakthroughs.
4. Adaptive Risk Management: Don’t Fear Risk, Manage It
Here’s a truth that many innovation efforts shy away from: risk is inevitable. The key isn’t avoiding it — it’s managing it. Bold ideas come with uncertainty, but that uncertainty doesn’t have to be a dealbreaker. The most innovative teams don’t let fear paralyse them; they structure their approach to minimise risk while maximising learning.
Consider Michelin’s strategy with its airless tyres. Instead of diving headfirst into the mass consumer market, they started small, targeting niche segments like construction vehicles. These early, controlled rollouts allowed them to test, refine, and learn without exposing the business to unnecessary risk. Once the concept was validated, they scaled up with confidence.
Here’s where most teams falter: they treat risk as an all-or-nothing proposition. They either dive in recklessly or back away entirely. Adaptive risk management is about breaking the work into manageable pieces, testing assumptions, and building momentum with each step.
“The biggest risk is not taking any risk. In a world that’s changing really quickly, the only strategy that is guaranteed to fail is not taking risks.” — Mark Zuckerberg
Action Step:
Start small. Identify one aspect of your innovation that carries the most uncertainty and test it on a limited scale. Use the results to inform the next step, and expand only when the data supports it.
Pro Tip:
Use drip funding. Instead of betting everything upfront, allocate resources in phases. As each phase delivers results, unlock the next round of funding. This keeps the stakes manageable and ensures you only invest in promising ideas.
Remember:
Risk isn’t your enemy — complacency is. Embrace uncertainty, but do it on your terms. When you manage risk proactively, you turn it from a roadblock into a stepping stone.
5. Align Innovation With Strategic Priorities
Innovation without alignment is like a ship without a compass — it might move but won’t go where it needs to. The most successful innovation efforts are deliberately tied to an organisation’s strengths, long-term goals, and market position.
Take Disney+ as an example. Disney didn’t just jump into the streaming war to keep up with competitors. They leaned into their greatest asset — their world-class content library. Disney+ wasn’t just a streaming service; it was a strategic move to monetise their existing intellectual property while creating a direct-to-consumer channel that strengthened their entire ecosystem.
The mistake many organisations make? Chasing shiny objects. They pursue trends or ideas — AI, Web3, metaverse — that don’t align with their core competencies, spreading resources too thin and diluting their impact. True innovation amplifies what you already do well rather than distracting you from it.
Tendayi Viki nails this: companies should define an innovation thesis — a clear, strategic statement that outlines where and how they will innovate. This ensures that every innovation initiative:
Leverages existing strengths
Aligns with long-term goals
Creates measurable value for customers and the business
Without an innovation thesis, companies risk making random bets, hoping something sticks. With one, innovation becomes a focused investment and not a lottery ticket.
“Strategy is about making choices, trade-offs; it’s about deliberately choosing to be different.” — Michael Porter
Action Step:
Audit your innovation pipeline. For each initiative, ask:
Does this leverage our strengths?
Does it align with our long-term goals?
Will it create value for our customers and business in a way that supports our strategy?
If the answer isn’t a confident “yes,” rethink your approach.
Pro Tip:
Write your Innovation Thesis and prioritise ruthlessly. Just because an idea is good doesn’t mean it’s right for you. Define the specific areas where innovation will drive business impact. This doesn’t mean saying no to all new opportunities but saying yes intentionally.
Remember:
Innovation isn’t just about new ideas; it’s about the right ideas. When your innovation efforts align with your strategy, they don’t just create value — they create lasting impact.
6. Cross-Functional Collaboration: Stop Treating Teams Like Silos
Innovation is a team sport, but all too often, teams play on separate fields. Silos slow down progress, breed miscommunication, and stifle creativity. The best organisations know that collaboration across functions isn’t just helpful — it’s essential.
Innovation efforts thrive when finance, legal, and IT functions are treated as enablers, not obstacles. Too often, these teams are seen as roadblocks — slowing things down with processes, approvals, and risk assessments. But the most innovative organisations flip the script. Instead of letting compliance become a last-minute bottleneck, they bring legal in early. Instead of treating finance as a gatekeeper, they make them a strategic partner in funding innovation the right way. When these functions are engaged from the start, potential roadblocks become solutions, keeping momentum high and innovation moving forward.
The trap many organisations fall into is viewing innovation as the responsibility of one team or department. But real innovation happens when diverse perspectives come together, challenging assumptions and co-creating solutions.
Action Step:
Host a cross-functional innovation session. Bring together representatives from all relevant teams — product, marketing, engineering, legal, and finance — and focus on solving a shared challenge. Align everyone on the goal and encourage open, constructive dialogue.
But here’s the catch: real innovation means challenging assumptions — including the ‘sacred cows.’ Every organisation has them — those untouchable rules and long-standing practices that no one dares question. Some exist for a good reason (regulatory requirements, ethical commitments), but others? They’re just relics of old ways of working.
Encourage the team to separate true constraints from outdated habits. What must remain a non-negotiable, and what’s an inherited rule holding you back? Push the conversation further by asking:
What do we assume to be true that might not be?
If we started from scratch today, would we still do it this way?
What would happen if we broke this “rule”?
Sacred cows often crumble under scrutiny — and when they do, they make room for new, better ways of working. Challenge them, and you might unlock your biggest innovation yet.
Pro Tip:
Create shared ownership. Establish clear roles and responsibilities for each function in the innovation process. Collaboration becomes smoother and more effective when everyone knows how they contribute to the bigger picture.
Remember:
The best ideas don’t live in isolation. They’re born at the intersection of diverse perspectives — what we at Thrivve call “innovation from the edges.” It’s why we believe real breakthroughs happen when teams break out of their silos and engage across functions, disciplines, and perspectives.
Break down the barriers, and watch your innovation efforts soar.
7. Systems Thinking: Build Innovation Into the Organisation
Innovation isn’t a one-off project or a flash of inspiration — it’s a system. The best organisations don’t just chase ideas; they design their processes, culture, and structure to foster continuous innovation.
ISO 56001 provides a great example of embedding systems thinking into innovation. It offers a structured framework that connects all parts of an organisation, from leadership and strategy to operations and delivery. This approach ensures that innovation isn’t just a random act — it’s a repeatable, scalable process that becomes part of the organisation’s DNA.
Here’s the mistake many teams make: they treat innovation as a side project, disconnected from the rest of the business. But organisations have an immune system — an ‘antibody response’ — that resists change and protects the status quo. Even the best ideas struggle to gain traction and deliver impact without intentional integration and alignment.
Action Step:
Map your innovation ecosystem. Identify all the key components — teams, tools, processes, and stakeholders — that play a role in turning ideas into outcomes. Action Step:
Map your innovation ecosystem. Identify all the key components — teams, tools, processes, and stakeholders — that play a role in turning ideas into outcomes. Look for gaps, bottlenecks, or misalignments that might slow things down or dilute impact.
Pro Tip:
Treat your innovation process like a value stream. Just as you would optimise a production line, continuously refine how ideas flow from concept to execution. Anticipate resistance and friction points — from misaligned incentives, rigid processes, or cultural inertia — and find ways to navigate or neutralise them.
Remember:
Innovation thrives when it’s treated as a system, not an event. The corporate immune system will react to change — your job is to channel that energy constructively. Build innovation into the fabric of your organisation, and you’ll create a sustainable engine for growth and transformation.
8. Speed Through Simplicity: Cut the Bureaucracy
Innovation hates red tape. The more complicated your processes, the slower your ideas move — and in today’s fast-paced world, speed wins. The best organisations know that simplicity isn’t just nice to have; it’s a competitive advantage.
Take Walmart’s grocery delivery, for example. They didn’t over-engineer their solution. Instead, they started simple: using existing store infrastructure to offer same-day delivery. By focusing on speed and simplicity, they delivered value quickly and iterated from there, learning and improving with every step.
Here’s the mistake most teams make: they overcomplicate. Endless approvals, sprawling committees, and bloated processes choke the life out of good ideas. Complexity might feel like control, but in reality, it’s the enemy of progress.
Action Step:
Simplify one part of your innovation process this week. Whether it’s streamlining approvals, cutting unnecessary meetings, or empowering teams to make decisions faster, find one bottleneck and remove it.
Pro Tip:
Use lightweight governance and drip funding to keep momentum high while managing risk. Instead of requiring full business cases and months-long approval cycles, fund early-stage ideas incrementally. Small, time-boxed investments (with clear success criteria) let teams prove value before scaling. This way, you’re betting on learning, not just assumptions.
Remember:
Simplicity isn’t laziness; it’s efficiency. The faster your ideas move, the sooner you can deliver value. Strip away the unnecessary, fund learning over guesswork, and let your innovation efforts fly.
9. Psychological Safety: Make It Safe to Fail
Fear is the enemy of innovation. If your team is afraid to take risks, they’ll stick to what’s safe — and safe rarely leads to groundbreaking ideas. The best organisations foster a culture of psychological safety, where failure isn’t punished but celebrated as a step toward learning and growth.
That’s why organisations like Google X (Google’s moonshot factory) deliberately encourage failure. They fund audacious ideas with high upsides but uncertain paths, knowing that failure is essential to radical breakthroughs. Instead of penalising failure, they reward learning velocity — because the faster you learn, the quicker you innovate. This mindset allows teams to experiment boldly, knowing that even “failed” ideas contribute to the bigger picture.
Here’s the thing: breakthroughs don’t come from making better candles — they come from inventing the light bulb. If Edison had only focused on refining the wick, we’d never have moved beyond candlelight. True innovation requires space to experiment, fail, and learn.
“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” — Thomas Edison
Action Step:
Create a culture where experiments are celebrated, not punished. When an idea doesn’t work, ask what was learned, not who was at fault. And share those lessons across the organisation. This shifts the focus from blame to growth.
Pro Tip:
Adopt pre-mortems and failure retrospectives. Before launching an idea, ask: “What would make this fail?” Then, when things don’t go as planned, capture insights early and apply them quickly. The best teams aren’t the ones that never fail — they’re the ones that learn the fastest.
Remember:
Innovation isn’t about eliminating failure — it’s about making failure safe. The biggest risk isn’t trying something bold and failing; it’s playing it safe and becoming irrelevant.
10. Balance Core and Transformational Innovation
Innovation isn’t an all-or-nothing game. Focusing solely on incremental improvements keeps you stuck in the present while chasing moonshots can leave you overextended. The secret? Balance. The best organisations split their efforts between core (incremental) innovations optimising today and transformational innovations shaping tomorrow.
Let me come back to Michelin’s airless tyres once again. They didn’t abandon their core market of traditional tyres. Instead, they improved their existing offerings while simultaneously investing in a bold, transformational concept for niche markets. This dual focus allowed them to deliver value now while laying the groundwork for long-term growth.
This is where many organisations go wrong: they either pour all their resources into safe bets, neglecting opportunities to differentiate, or they overcommit to risky moonshots that fail to deliver tangible results.
Action Step:
Audit your innovation portfolio. Categorise projects into core (incremental), adjacent (new opportunities close to your current market), and transformational (game-changers). Are you investing in all three? If not, adjust your balance.
Pro Tip:
Allocate resources proportionally. A standard benchmark is 70–20–10: 70% on core, 20% on adjacent, and 10% on transformational innovations. Adapt this ratio based on your organisation’s risk appetite and goals.
Remember:
Sustainable innovation isn’t about going all in on the next big thing or sticking rigidly to what works today. It’s about balancing the now and the next, ensuring you stay competitive today while preparing to lead tomorrow.
Conclusion: Build Innovation That Matters
Innovation isn’t magic — it’s discipline. It’s not about chasing shiny new frameworks or clinging to the latest buzzwords. It’s about grounding your efforts in principles that guide you toward impact, adaptability, and value.
The ten principles we’ve explored above aren’t abstract ideals but a practical roadmap. Start with the problem, not the solution. Focus on measurable value. Move fast with small bets. Align your efforts with strategy. Above all, create an environment where collaboration thrives, risks are managed, and failure fuels learning.
This isn’t about a one-off effort. It’s about embedding innovation into the DNA of your organisation — so it becomes a system that consistently delivers for your customers and your business.
Your Call to Action
Take the first step today. Choose one principle and act on it:
Redesign your next team meeting to foster cross-functional collaboration.
Identify a small experiment and run it this week.
Audit your innovation portfolio to find the right balance between core and transformational efforts.
Whatever you do, don’t wait. Innovation doesn’t happen by accident — it happens by design. Start small, move fast, and build the foundation for innovation that lasts.
So, where will you begin? The future of your organisation depends on the actions you take today. Make them count.