Design Thinking
DON'Ts for corporate innovation
The anti-playbook: theatre to retire, rituals that waste a quarter, and the few moves that actually move a P&L.
The S-Curve·
// Market
Corporate innovation for people who actually run it
Most corporate innovation strategy is a mural. The useful kind has a budget line waiting on Monday.
Corporate innovation has a branding problem it earned. Too many labs. Too many murals. Too many hackathons with no budget line waiting on Monday. I wrote the DON'Ts because I kept watching smart people waste a quarter on theatre and call it culture.
This hub is for people who actually run it. Corporate innovation strategy is allowed to be opinionated. It is not allowed to be vague. If your framework cannot stop a bad idea, it is interior design.
The useful version looks like management. A portfolio of bets. Owners. Timeboxes. Kill criteria. A P&L sponsor who will still be in the job when the experiment is ugly. Everything that exists to look innovative in a town hall is optional and usually harmful.
Frameworks worth keeping
Lean startup. A design sprint. A product sprint. Build-measure-learn with the constraint in the room. Those are corporate innovation frameworks that force a decision. The house of posters, the "innovation funnel" with 400 ideas and no deaths, the awards night: retire them.
I am not anti-workshop. I run them. The test is residue. Did a process change? Did a prototype get a budget? Did we stop something? If the only output is a photo, you bought a party.
Hackathons fail this test on a schedule. We mapped enough of them. The ones that mattered had a budget line waiting. The rest produced T-shirts and a backlog nobody owned. If you want the long version, read why your hackathon didn't change anything. Then do not run another one until the money is real.
Public-sector innovation is the same physics with a different procurement language. Agencies do not need a lab. They need permission. When a UK agency tenders for design thinking, that is not a vibe. That is a brief.
Where it sits
Close to a business unit. An innovation team that reports only to brand will ship campaigns. A team that reports to a P&L can ship a change to how work gets done. I have seen both. Only one shows up in the operating rhythm six months later.
Enterprise innovation management is the unglamorous twin of this page. Read enterprise innovation if your problem is the portfolio, not the story. Read lean startup if your problem is how to test inside a company that already has customers and a regulator.
Geos: AU, NZ, HK, SG, the US, the UK and Canada. We name companies and people in those markets because the reader is trying to steal a pattern, not a platitude. Digital transformation and corporate innovation overlap. They are not the same search. Transformation is the programme. Innovation is the bet inside it. Both go wrong the same way: activity without a kill.
Collective Campus trains the rooms that have to live with this. We also work on corporate-startup partnerships when the bet is actually a build with someone smaller. Two links. That is the offer. The rest is the argument.
What we publish here
DON'Ts for corporate innovation is the anti-playbook. The corporate innovation field guide is the longer steal. Inkeros is a two-day sprint with a Canadian company that had to ship, not workshop.
If you are writing this year's strategy, cut the section on culture until it names a metric. Culture is what people do when you leave the room. You change it by changing the work, not by renaming the team.
I keep a short list of DON'Ts because the DO list is already on every poster. Do not launch a lab without a customer. Do not run a hackathon without a budget line. Do not staff an innovation team that cannot say no. Do not measure sticky notes. Do not let brand own the only narrative. Do not buy a framework to avoid a decision. The DON'Ts piece is the long version. This hub is the place we keep sending people who still want a synonym for theatre.
If a founder of a startup reads this and feels smug, they should not. Corporates fail in public. Startups fail in silence and then write a thread. The physics is the same: no kill test, no learning. The difference is that the corporate still has a P&L to protect. Protect it by stopping the bad bets early, not by hiding them in a garage.
What we have written
Lean Startup & Product Sprints
Why your hackathon didn't change anything
We mapped 40 enterprise hackathons. The ones that mattered had a budget line waiting on Monday.
The S-Curve·
Design Thinking
Public sector design thinking without the theatre
Agencies do not need a lab. They need permission, a metric, and a 90-day window.
The S-Curve·
AI Training
CelcomDigi is asking Huawei to co-design how its people learn
A three-year memorandum in Petaling Jaya. Pathways in AI, data, 5G and cloud, and certifications at associate, professional and expert level. Albern Murty says advantage follows learning faster than the pace of change. Azmi Ujang, the chief human resources officer, was in the room.
The S-Curve·
AI Design Sprints
Singapore is measuring its AI training by what officers change, not courses finished
The Institute of Digital Government wants 150,000 public officers equipped by 2028, and it will judge itself on application and lasting workflow change. More than 1,000 officers have already been through its AI Sprints.
The S-Curve··
Agile
Canva is reshaping a fifth of its roles to get back to small, empowered teams
Melanie Perkins calls it the hardest moment in the company's 13 years. The restructure affects 1,271 roles, makes Sydney the home of product and says AI is shaping the products, not doing the work of those who leave.
The S-Curve··
Productivity & Time Management
Why Your AI Program Isn't Delivering Business Outcomes
Most work in large organisations is a waste of time, and AI just makes us faster at it. Redesign the work before bolting AI on top of it.
Steve Glaveski·
AI Training
Kier is judging its Oxford programme by what leaders take back
Fifty leaders. A three-day residential at Saïd Business School, then cross-business Growth Groups with Oxford. Stuart Togwell says humans stay at the helm, and the measure is how the learning is applied.
The S-Curve·
Field guides
Work in the room
Questions leaders actually ask
- What is a corporate innovation framework that is worth using?
- One that forces a kill decision. Lean startup, a design sprint, a product sprint. Not a house of posters. If the framework cannot stop a bad idea, it is interior design.
- How do you write a corporate innovation strategy that survives a board pack?
- Name the constraint, the metric and the 90-day window. Boards do not need another definition of innovation. They need to know what you will stop funding.
- What is innovation theatre?
- Hackathons with no budget line. Labs with no customers. Awards for ideas that never meet a risk committee. I have sat in those rooms. They feel busy. They do not move a P&L.
- Where should corporate innovation sit in the organisation?
- Close to a P&L owner. An innovation team that reports only to a brand function will ship campaigns. A team that reports to a business unit can ship a change to how work gets done.