Much of our recent work has focused on helping scale-ups get back to innovating. We love doing this – please don’t change! But in a way, it’s weird that we’re needed at all. After all, most scale-ups got where they are BECAUSE they innovated. So perhaps the more interesting question is: what’s stopping them from doing it again?
The obvious answer here is that they don’t need to innovate right now. Scale-ups are…scaling. They’re consolidating their position and protecting what they’ve built. For that, they need more process and predictability and less of the uncertainty and change that comes with innovation.
But we see a deeper, perhaps more pernicious problem that often comes as a by-product of this singular focus. Teams who forget how to innovate and, as a consequence, never go back.
This is dangerous because the job isn’t done yet. You might have product-market fit, but that can change very quickly. Especially when the cost of innovation is the lowest it’s ever been and the speed of innovation is at its highest. There’s always a hungry little disruptor waiting to eat your lunch.
What to look out for
The first signals we notice tend to show up in conversations with founders. We hear things like:
- “It feels like the energy has dropped since we closed our round.”
- “Even the tiniest product change now seems to take forever.”
- “We have more people but it feels like our vision is getting further away”
Notice that all these comments have an element of loss to them. These founders all feel like their organisation had something and now it’s gone.
We also hear frustration of course. There’s a thrill that comes from innovating at pace and finding value that nobody else has spotted. But the job is only half done and they’re acutely aware how much potential is still out there.
It’s not just founders that sense this. We also see this sentiment echoed in other parts of the organisation. Symptoms like fewer and fewer people taking the time to get under the skin of what customers really need. Less original thinking and more cough ‘best practice’ being shipped. And a slow – increasing reluctance to try anything that might ‘affect the numbers’ (hello, local maximum).
Why is this happening?
Let’s be clear, we’re not saying this is a deliberate move by anyone. People have good intentions and it’s unlikely anyone actively wants to squash innovation out of the org. Instead, this is more likely to be an unintended consequence of scaling. And while there are obvious benefits to having more people and resources, there are downsides to manage too.
Firstly, that intimate understanding of the problems your business solves, who you solve them for and why it’s important has become more fragmented. We’d argue that this understanding is the driving force behind innovation, so when it becomes diluted, the ripple effects are inevitable.
Similarly, more people means more teams. Again a good thing, but can also be at the expense of the joined-up customer experience, as teams become overly focused on their part of the product and less concerned with how it all comes together.
It’s also about now that metrics start to drive decision-making. This brings visibility and perhaps rigour, but it can also stop experimentation in its tracks.
In short, the incentives are changing and, consequently, so are people’s behaviours. Where innovation was once championed (we are the only x that does y), the new prize is stability and incremental improvement (we are experts in optimising z).
What can we do about it?
If you’re a founder and recognise these symptoms, or maybe an investor noticing these patterns in your portfolio companies, it’s a good moment to intervene. We chose the term ‘intervene’ very deliberately. These changes tend to be subtle and slow-moving, so there’s no need for drastic measures or blunt-force tactics. Instead, smaller well-placed nudges that fit into existing workflows and behaviours can make a big difference, while maintaining momentum in other areas. Remember the goal isn’t to disrupt scaling, but to ensure innovation continues alongside it.
Here are some tactics that have worked for us:
Zoom out to see the big picture
It’s easy for teams to get caught up in the details of their individual roles, but taking a step back can reveal valuable perspectives. Encourage teams to periodically shift their focus from specific touchpoints to the entire customer experience. Simple tools like journey maps help visualise how everything connects and often expose duplicated effort, blind spots or friction that may be holding innovation back. By broadening their perspective, teams often find opportunities to improve the overall experience, rather than just refining their small piece of it.
Look beyond your bubble
Take a step back and view your product or service in the context of your competitors and the broader market landscape. The strategy canvas is a nice framework for this, helping you assess how your service is positioned against competitors. It also naturally prompts questions like: Who are we actually competing against? What are they overlooking? What new behaviours could reshape the market? This broader perspective encourages a more strategic outlook to your work.
Tell stories
Rather than using internally focused language, look for opportunities to tell stories about your customers and the impact your business has on their lives. Storytelling is a subtle but powerful way to reconnect teams with your organisation’s purpose and goals. It helps people move beyond everyday formats like code, PowerPoint or spreadsheets by making customer experiences relatable. When teams see customers as the protagonists of a story—and your business as their guide—it becomes easier to align around what truly matters.
Role model collaboration
Break down silos by giving people opportunities to work together across teams. Service blueprints are a powerful tool for this as they help teams see how cross-departmental efforts come together to create real customer value. They highlight that great experiences aren’t created in isolation—they emerge from coordinated efforts across teams. By focusing on the entire journey (horizontally) rather than individual departments or hierarchies (vertically), you create better alignment around shared goals.
Give work the right time and place
When discussing work that needs to be done, avoid lumping everything into a single backlog. A simple framework like Now, Next, and Future helps separate immediate priorities from longer-term exploration. It distinguishes between tasks that are ready to ship, work that needs further research or design and ideas worth keeping but not yet a priority. Backlogs are great for well-defined, immediate tasks — but they’re not made for exploration. Creating clear distinctions ensures that innovation doesn’t get buried under day-to-day execution.
Make space for safe experimentation
Create opportunities where teams can experiment without fear of failure (play!) Frame experiments as a way to explore and learn, rather than a risk to avoid. Encourage teams to take calculated risks and publicly share what they’ve learned—even when things don’t go as expected. This shifts the focus from success vs failure to growth and insight and builds a culture where innovation is seen as an ongoing process rather than a reckless gamble.
Bring in fresh perspectives
Look for opportunities to gain outside insight. Connecting with peers in adjacent industries or startups at a similar stage can help you unearth lessons learned and challenge assumptions. Your investors can also be valuable connectors, helping you tap into a wider network of expertise and uncover new opportunities that might not emerge from internal discussions alone.
Regardless of the approach you take, note that most of the ideas above focus on changing the conversation, shifting perspectives and fostering new habits. In our experience, stepping back to view the bigger picture is often enough to allow teams to see opportunities themselves and take ownership, rather than relying on innovation mandates from above. That’s why we call them interventions—they’re proactive measures that will help you maintain innovation, rather than reactive steps to take after it’s already lost.
Closing thoughts
The key idea here is that exploitation – improving what you already have – can and should co-exist with exploration—the pursuit of new ideas. These two approaches aren’t mutually exclusive; they’re in fact complementary. And when they work together, they compound and create value far greater than either could achieve alone.
With exploitation, you’re squeezing as much value as possible from what you’ve built. You’re refining, optimising and building solid foundations. But it’s in exploration where you create new possibilities. It’s where you find the big leaps, unexpected opportunities and perhaps even entirely new markets. It’s what keeps you ahead of the pack.
The challenge is striking the balance. Too much exploitation, and you risk stagnation —becoming irrelevant while the world moves on. Too much exploration, and you risk instability— chasing every shiny object without solid ground to stand on. The magic happens when you weave both into the fabric of your culture.
If any of these challenges resonate and you’d value an outside perspective—or just want to explore these ideas further — we’d love to talk.