Innovation Isn't A Lifestyle. It's A Practice. Here's What That Actually Means.

You know that moment when you're in a meeting and someone throws around the phrase "eat, sleep, innovate" like it's motivational advice?

Like it's some kind of aspirational mantra that's going to magically make your product better and your company more competitive.

I recently talked to Scott Anthony, who's spent decades as a senior partner at Innosight, helping companies figure out what innovation actually is versus what people *think* it is. And here's what stuck with me: Innovation isn't a lifestyle. It's not something you breathe into the culture like some sacred corporate religion. It's a practice. A discipline. Something you get better at by doing it, fucking up, learning, and doing it again.

That distinction matters more than you'd think.

The Myth We Keep Buying

Most companies treat innovation like it's a personality trait. You either have it or you don't. Your culture either "embraces innovation" or it doesn't. So they hire innovation consultants, run innovation workshops, slap motivational posters about disruption on the walls, and somehow expect innovation to magically show up.

What they're actually doing is confusing inspiration with instruction.

Scott told me something that cut through all the noise: Innovation is just a repeatable process of figuring out what customers actually need and building it better than anyone else. That's it. You don't need a special mindset. You don't need to "think differently." You need a method.

The problem is, most companies approach innovation by adding it *on top of* their existing way of working. You've got your day job—and then, in your spare time, on nights and weekends, you innovate. In your free brain cells. With your residual energy.

It's no fucking wonder nothing changes.

The Pattern That Works

What Scott has observed in companies that actually sustain innovation—not just pull off a lucky hit once, but do it over and over again—is that they treat innovation as a core operating system, not a side quest.

They ask themselves: What are we trying to learn? What assumptions do we need to test? What's the minimum viable experiment that proves or disproves the thing we're betting on?

Then they build that learning into how work actually happens. It's not "innovation time." It's just... how you work.

Scott breaks innovation down into three fundamental activities. One: You identify a real customer problem. Not a problem you think they have. Not a problem that would be convenient for your business model. A problem they actually, tangibly experience.

Two: You develop the smallest possible version of a solution—not to launch, but to learn. What will this teach us? What questions does it answer?

Three: You measure not whether it succeeded, but what it revealed. Did we understand the problem correctly? Are customers willing to pay? Do we have a real business model or just a cool thing that doesn't make money?

Most organizations skip the first one. They start with "What can we build?" instead of "What do people actually need?" And from there, everything falls apart.

The Speed Advantage Compounds

Here's where it gets interesting. Scott pointed out that the rate at which you can cycle through this process—test, learn, refine, test again—becomes your competitive advantage. Not your initial idea. Not your budget. The speed at which you can learn what works.

That sounds simple until you actually try to implement it in an organization where meetings require three levels of approval, where "move fast" conflicts with "follow the process," where people are afraid that moving fast means taking irresponsible risks.

It doesn't. It's the opposite. When you break down innovation into smaller, faster tests, you're actually reducing risk. You're spending less money to learn. You're catching mistakes earlier. You're not betting the company on one big bet that takes two years to validate.

But that requires a completely different relationship with failure. Most companies say they embrace failure. What they actually mean is: "We embrace failure if the outcome is positive." Which isn't embracing failure. That's just celebrating wins.

Real failure tolerance means you run the experiment, you learn something valuable, and the person who designed it doesn't get punished because it didn't generate revenue in month three.

Why This Matters

You're probably not going to restructure your entire organization tomorrow to make this work. Most people won't. But here's what you can do:

Identify one thing your customer actually complains about. Not something you think is wrong with your product. Not a feature you think they need. Something they're actually struggling with right now.

Build the smallest possible thing that addresses it. I mean *small*. Like, absurdly small. Smaller than you think.

Test it. With real people. Not your colleagues. Not focus groups. Real people in the real world trying to solve their real problem.

Measure what you learned. Not whether it succeeded. What it taught you about your customer, your assumption, or what's actually possible.

Then do it again. Faster.

That's it. That's innovation. Not some magical cultural attribute. Not something you need an MBA to understand. Just a practice you get better at by doing it.

The Real Constraint

The thing that stops most organizations isn't the lack of good ideas. Everyone's got ideas. The constraint is organizational will. It's the willingness to admit that what you're doing now might be incomplete. It's the courage to say "Let's find out" instead of "We already know."

And it's the discipline to do it again, and again, until you get better at it.

Because here's what Scott knows from working with companies across industries: The organizations that sustain competitive advantage aren't the ones that came up with the next big disruption. They're the ones that got good at the innovation process itself. That embedded learning into their operating model. That moved fast enough to stay ahead of the things that can kill you.

Everything else is just eating, sleeping, and dreaming about innovation.

Actually building it? That's a different skill entirely.

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Want the Full Story?

Scott Anthony wrote the book on this—literally. Eat Sleep Innovate breaks down how some of the world's most successful companies have embedded innovation into their actual operating systems. And if you want to hear him talk about why most companies fail at innovation despite spending millions on it, listen to the full conversation on The School of Innovation podcast.

Because here's the thing about innovation: Everyone says they want it. Very few people are willing to do what it actually takes—which is less glamorous than you'd think and a lot more methodical.

The question is: Are you?