Your innovation initiative is probably theatre

THE OPS BRIEF — Issue #3

Your weekly dose of operational intelligence for program managers who prefer clarity over noise.

THIS WEEK'S THOUGHT

Most organizations don't resist innovation because they're afraid of change. They resist it because they've been burned by initiatives that promised transformation and delivered theatre.

🎙️ THIS WEEK ON THE SCHOOL OF INNOVATION

"How a 100,000-Person Pharma Company Learned That Innovation Isn't Invented — It's Cultivated"with Julia Hitzbleck

A 100,000-person pharmaceutical company. Five layers of management. An innovation committee with a budget and a mandate. And almost nothing to show for it — until they changed the question they were asking.

Julia Hitzbleck works inside large organizations to build genuine innovation culture, and her insight in this episode cuts through a lot of noise: the problem isn't that big companies can't innovate. It's that they keep trying to control something that only works when you give people real permission to question things.

If you work with corporate sponsors, run internal innovation programs, or are trying to build a culture of experimentation inside any kind of institution, this episode is essential listening.

🔗 Listen to the episode⏱️ 7 min read / full episode

🛠️ THIS WEEK'S TOOL

Theory of Change Builder — Free Download

If you're going to build an innovation program — or convince a large organization to support one — you need to be able to explain how it creates results. Not just that it does.

The Theory of Change Builder walks you through mapping your full causal chain: from inputs and activities to outcomes and long-term impact. It forces the assumptions out into the open before they quietly undermine your program. Useful for program design, funder reporting, and any situation where "we believe this works" isn't enough.

🔗 Download free

📍 FROM THE FIELD

I've been working with several IIA-funded innovation centers this month.

And there's a tension I keep running into that nobody talks about openly.

These centers exist to serve early-stage founders. People with high opportunity costs, tight runways, and zero patience for slow decisions. They need a connection, an introduction, a yes or a no — and they need it this week.

But the centers themselves were designed for governance, not speed.

Every major decision — and sometimes the minor ones too — goes through a board of directors. Appointed chairman. Quorum requirements. Meeting cycles.

Again, this isn't malicious. It's public money. Accountability matters. The structure exists for good reasons.

But the startup doesn't care about the structure.

By the time the board has approved the decision, the founder has either figured it out themselves, found another route, or quietly shut down.

The irony is that the governance designed to protect the investment is often what undermines it.

ONE THING YOU CAN DO THIS WEEK

Ask yourself: does your program give founders — or participants — genuine permission to question the way things are done? Not in a workshop. In the actual structure of the program. If the answer is "mostly in theory," that's worth sitting with.

I'll see you next week,

Yaniv