Innovation groundhog day: Why corporations keep forgetting what they learn
Let’s start with a question that should make most executive boards pause: would you rotate junior talent through your legal, finance, or R&D teams every 18 to 24 months, resetting institutional memory and strategic know-how each time?
Very few would consider it.
And yet, this is very often how innovation is managed in large organizations.
Innovation, unlike operational departments, typically requires a longer time horizon—often five to ten years—to bear fruit. But instead of building stable, high-skilled teams with strategic mandates, many corporations delegate innovation to junior staff or temporary roles, with little long-term accountability or continuity. The result is not just inefficiency—it’s the erosion of potential strategic value.
Innovation isn’t a sprint—it’s a strategic commitment
As explored in posts like “Your HR Can’t Hire for Innovation” and “Rebooting Your Innovation Framework,” successful innovation depends on deep engagement, long-term exploration, and the willingness to shift internal culture and market positioning. These are not entry-level challenges. They demand a mix of strategic acumen, market foresight, and internal influence—none of which typically develop within two-year rotational stints.
Yet, very often, innovation teams are formed with junior talent, shuffled frequently, and disbanded once they start to build real insight or momentum. The cycle resets, and previously gained knowledge is lost or ignored. This is more than a missed opportunity—it’s a recurring blind spot.
The hidden cost of institutional forgetting
Without continuity, insight is transient. Internal political navigation, ecosystem relationships, or lessons from past pilots—all fade into institutional amnesia. There’s rarely a version-controlled system of best practices, and knowledge is almost never structured for long-term leverage.
Compare this to how companies manage finance or legal functions: with stable processes, robust governance, and deep continuity. In contrast, innovation is too often treated like a high-visibility side project rather than a core strategic function.
Raise your hand if you haven’t recently seen a junior marketing profile reassigned to manage innovation projects. It’s not that this should never happen—but when it becomes the default pattern rather than a deliberate choice, that’s when it starts to erode real innovation capacity. Again, this wouldn't fly in finance or legal...
Toward a more strategic approach
What if innovation was treated with the same seriousness as finance or R&D?
This would require:
- Teams designed to accumulate expertise over time—not rotate out before they reach maturity.
- Long-term strategic goals aligned with executive mandates.
- Processes to retain and evolve learnings, not start from scratch with each new cycle.
- Clear leadership ownership and cross-functional support.
Most companies have the desire to innovate, but often lack the organizational structure to do so effectively. As we highlighted in “When Innovation Is No Longer Optional,” the issue isn’t ambition—it’s the absence of long-term alignment and sustained commitment.
So perhaps the real question isn’t “how do we innovate?” but rather, “are we treating innovation with the same discipline and seriousness as our other strategic functions?”