innovation depends – A cofounder and president argues innovation isn’t something companies can “install” like a tool. Instead, it depends on who leaders are under pressure, how fast decisions are made with incomplete information, and whether failure is handled as data through low-
“Innovation” is becoming a constant in keynote speeches and strategy documents. But the word is losing its edge. When executives are asked to define innovation, they often give answers that are vague and unhelpful—and the vagueness, in one view, isn’t accidental.
Innovation is hard to execute while the calendar is still turning. It’s easier to celebrate later, after outcomes are known. In that gap between talk and execution, one message lands with force: the real determinants of innovation don’t sit in slogans. They sit in how people behave under pressure.
The first argument is personal and uncomfortable. Being an innovator can’t be installed in an individual the way a company installs a new process. Instead. it’s treated as a “phenotype”—a set of traits that shows up in how a person operates under pressure. If you’re an innovator. the focus is described as disruption of norms. impatience with the status quo. and a persistent pull toward asking “why.” The risk tolerance is framed too: not recklessness. but the ability to see risk clearly. weigh it honestly. and still move forward when standing still carries its own cost.
Those characteristics, the cofounder argues, are exactly what culture can either nurture or crush. A business culture that punishes failure. rewards consensus. and optimizes for stability is described as working against the people who could push a company forward. The practical demand is direct: companies need room to breathe—and leaders who are seen as backing their teams.
The second secret shifts from personality to tempo. The belief that more information automatically produces better decisions is described as common. But in fast-moving environments. the ability to decide quickly with incomplete information is portrayed as more important than deciding perfectly after a slow crawl. In the story of building new technology, urgency becomes a survival mechanism.
At Paragonix. the development of organ preservation technology is offered as an example of how uncertainty can feel like working “blind” when there is no competition to benchmark against. What kept progress moving. according to the account. wasn’t perfect clarity—it was the willingness to decide. execute. and adjust in real time.
That leads to a counterintuitive suggestion in the early stages: try to ignore competitors. When building something genuinely new, competitors are more likely to be focused on yesterday’s problems. Benchmarking too early, the argument warns, can pull a team into building something only “slightly better” than what already exists. The goal is described as building toward what should be, not simply what already is.
Then comes the third secret, where the stakes get sharper: failure is necessary for innovation. A company that never fails is described as maintaining boundaries rather than pushing them. Real risk is presented as the place where real innovation lives. which means that sometimes a team won’t make its shot.
But the focus isn’t on failure itself. It’s on failing the right way. The distinction is between high-cost failure—committing enormous resources before testing viability—and low-cost failure. where small. fast experiments answer critical questions early. The prescription is to take big swings on vision while keeping execution in smaller steps. Teams should ask early and often about signs that something isn’t working. and. most importantly. pay attention to the answer.
The account also points to the ways companies can mistake symptoms for progress. Companies with low failure rates in innovation are described as not driving innovation effectively. Those failure rates only become a true negative when the failures happen for the wrong reasons: failing fast enough. learning from failures. or spending too much money failing.
Failing well is defined through a change in meaning. A failed experiment should be treated as data rather than defeat. When leaders can say, “this isn’t working, but here’s what I learned,” the culture is framed as one that drives innovation and makes space for breakthroughs with substance.
There’s an emotional through-line tying the three secrets together. Innovation is portrayed not as a slogan to repeat. but as a set of pressures that reveal what a company is made of: whether leaders have the phenotype to see risk and pursue disruption. whether teams move at the speed required when information is incomplete. and whether mistakes are handled as information instead of as a verdict.
The argument ends where many organizations struggle to look. What an innovative company looks like is described as embracing calculated risk, staying agile in decision-making, pushing forward when results are uncertain, and hiring the right phenotype.
Lisa Anderson is cofounder and president of Paragonix Technologies.
innovation corporate innovation leadership risk tolerance failure as data experimentation decision-making speed Paragonix Technologies organ preservation technology