# Why Your Company's Innovation Process is Broken - And It's Not What You Think **Other Blogs of Interest:** [Read more here](https://skillcoaching.bigcartel.com/blog) | [Further reading](https://ethiofarmers.com/why-professional-development-courses-are-essential-for-career-growth) | [More insights](https://theoldreader.com/profile/80a1edc9bc0e293cc29451f5) The slide deck had 47 pages. Forty-seven bloody pages about "unleashing our innovative potential through synergistic ideation frameworks." I counted them twice because I couldn't believe someone had actually produced this monument to corporate nonsense and expected us to sit through it with straight faces. This was last month's "Innovation Workshop" at a mid-tier accounting firm in Melbourne, and it perfectly exemplified everything that's wrong with how Australian businesses approach innovation. We're obsessing over processes, frameworks, and buzz words while completely missing the point of what innovation actually requires. ## The Real Problem Nobody Talks About Here's what nobody wants to admit: your innovation process isn't broken because you lack the right methodology. It's broken because you've turned creativity into a bureaucratic exercise that would make the ATO proud. I've been consulting with businesses across Australia for over fifteen years, and I've seen this pattern everywhere from Perth startups to Sydney corporates. Companies spend months developing "innovation frameworks" when they should be spending that time actually trying new things. [More information here](https://www.alkhazana.net/2025/07/16/why-firms-ought-to-invest-in-professional-development-courses-for-employees/) about how this affects professional development specifically. The irony is suffocating. We're innovating our innovation process to death. ## Why Your Innovation Lab is Just Expensive Theatre Let me tell you about innovation labs. These glass-walled, bean-bag-filled spaces that cost more than most people's houses and produce about as much genuine innovation as a corporate retreat trust exercise. I visited one in Brisbane last year - all exposed brick, standing desks, and motivational quotes about "disrupting the status quo." The walls were covered with Post-it notes from brainstorming sessions that looked like someone had attacked a rainbow with a paper shredder. When I asked what they'd actually produced in the past twelve months, the innovation manager got very excited about their "ideation velocity metrics." Ideation velocity metrics. I'm not making this up. The problem isn't the space or even the Post-it notes. The problem is that we've confused the theatre of innovation with actual innovation. Real innovation is messy, unpredictable, and often happens in the most boring circumstances imaginable. Like when someone in accounts payable notices a pattern in invoice processing that saves the company $200,000 annually. That's innovation. It just doesn't look sexy enough for LinkedIn posts. ## The Bureaucracy of Breakthrough Ideas Most companies have turned innovation into a formal submission process that makes applying for a mortgage look spontaneous. You need business cases, ROI projections, stakeholder alignment meetings, and approval from seventeen different departments before you can test whether customers might like a slightly different colour button on your website. This is where I admit I got it completely wrong early in my career. I used to champion these formal innovation processes because they seemed "professional." I actually helped implement a six-stage gate process at a manufacturing company in Adelaide that required three months of documentation before you could spend $500 testing a new idea. The irony wasn't lost on me when their biggest innovation that year came from a maintenance worker who just started doing something differently without asking permission. The brutal truth is that by the time an idea has survived your innovation process, it's probably not innovative anymore. [Here is the source](https://diekfzgutachterwestfalen.de/why-professional-development-courses-are-essential-for-career-growth/) for more details on how this impacts professional growth. ## What Actually Works (And Why You Won't Do It) Real innovation happens when you create space for people to experiment without asking permission. Not "innovation time" - that's just scheduled creativity, which is about as effective as scheduled spontaneity. I mean actual permission to try things, fail fast, and move on. 3M famously allows employees to spend 15% of their time on personal projects. Post-it Notes came from this program. Google's 20% time gave us Gmail. These companies understand something most Australian businesses don't: innovation can't be scheduled. But here's why most companies won't adopt this approach - it requires trusting your employees. Really trusting them. Not the kind of trust where you say "we trust our people" in the annual report while tracking their keystrokes and monitoring their bathroom breaks. ## The Australian Innovation Paradox We have this weird relationship with innovation in Australia. We're incredibly good at it when we stop trying to be good at it. Look at WiFi technology, developed by CSIRO. The cochlear implant. Even the Hills Hoist clothesline - pure Aussie innovation that came from someone solving a practical problem, not from a formal innovation framework. Yet our corporate culture seems determined to stamp out the kind of practical, no-nonsense problem-solving that actually leads to breakthroughs. We've replaced "having a go" with "developing a strategic innovation roadmap aligned with our core competencies." [Personal recommendations](https://sewazoom.com/why-professional-development-courses-are-essential-for-career-growth/) suggest that this extends into how we approach all professional development. ## The Meeting That Killed Innovation I once sat in a two-hour meeting about whether we needed a meeting to discuss the innovation meeting schedule. This actually happened. At a technology company. In Sydney. In 2023. The meeting had an agenda. The agenda had sub-agendas. Someone took minutes about our discussion regarding the optimal cadence for innovation review sessions. We spent more time talking about talking about innovation than a small startup spends on actual product development in a month. This is what happens when you try to project-manage creativity. Innovation becomes something you do to innovation rather than something you do to solve problems. ## Stop Innovating Your Innovation Process Here's my controversial opinion: most companies should completely abandon their formal innovation processes. Just stop. Delete the framework documents, disband the innovation committees, and give that budget to the people who actually do the work. Instead, try this radical approach: - Let people fix annoying problems without writing business cases - Celebrate useful improvements, not just flashy ones - Measure outcomes, not ideation velocity metrics - Trust your frontline staff more than your consultants This won't happen, of course, because it doesn't feel like "proper" management. There's nothing to present at the leadership retreat. No colourful dashboards to show the board. Just the boring work of actually making things better. ## The Real Innovation Challenge The hardest part about innovation isn't coming up with ideas. It's creating an environment where good ideas can survive contact with your organisation. Most innovative ideas die not from lack of merit, but from death by process. I'm convinced that every company already has enough innovative ideas to transform their business. They're stuck in someone's head because the innovation process is too intimidating, too slow, or too political to bother with. Want to test this theory? Ask your newest employees what they think could be improved. Don't filter their responses through the innovation framework - just listen. You'll be amazed at what people notice when they haven't been trained to stop noticing things. ## Why This Matters More Than Ever The pace of change isn't slowing down. The companies that survive will be the ones that can adapt quickly, not the ones with the most sophisticated innovation management systems. [Further information here](https://croptech.com.sa/why-professional-development-courses-are-essential-for-career-growth/) about how this connects to broader professional development trends. This isn't about abandoning all structure - it's about distinguishing between helpful structure and bureaucratic theatre. Some of the most innovative companies I work with have incredibly simple innovation "processes": try things, keep what works, share what you learn. The accounting firm with the 47-slide presentation? Six months later, they're still developing their innovation framework. Meanwhile, their biggest competitor has launched three new services and gained 15% market share by simply encouraging their staff to solve client problems in new ways. That's the choice: you can perfect your innovation process, or you can actually innovate. But you probably can't do both.