When the Innovation Theater Kills Innovation

Noelia Almanza Ahari remembers presenting a three-year innovation strategy and discovering that her employers had expected something quite different. They wanted a creative person with good ideas. She was trying to establish a direction, build the conditions for execution and help the organisation use the expertise it already had. The mismatch was larger than a disagreement over a presentation.

In this episode of Innovation Rockstars, she joins Dr. Christian Mühlroth to examine what happens when a company’s innovation ambitions outrun its willingness to support the work. Drawing on experience across healthcare, health technology and other sectors, she describes the organisational obstacles and the personal fatigue they can create. Her account is candid, sometimes uncomfortable and firmly focused on people. It also ends with an example of meaningful change that, at the time, nobody involved thought to call innovation.

The person on stage cannot run the whole theatre

Almanza Ahari uses innovation theatre to describe several situations: innovation as a selling point, activity with no useful output, or a senior appointment unsupported by the money needed to deliver. The visible signs of commitment can conceal a weak operating foundation.

When Mühlroth extends the theatre metaphor, she places innovation professionals on stage. Other people operate the lights, handle the sound and bring in the audience. If that wider system fails, the person standing in public can still end up receiving the tomatoes.

The image captures an accountability problem. An innovation leader may be responsible for progress without controlling all the resources, decisions and cooperation needed to achieve it. Leadership support in principle can coexist with internal resistance in practice.

Her criticism is directed at that gap. Announcing an ambition, creating a role and expecting an individual to overcome every organisational obstacle leaves too much unresolved.

Define the job before judging the person

The strategy presentation exposes a misunderstanding that Almanza Ahari sees around innovation roles. Generating ideas is one part of the work. Establishing direction, facilitating execution and creating workable structures also matter.

She emphasises the knowledge already present in the company. Long-serving colleagues understand users, customers and the value the business creates. Ignoring that competence while searching for something new can weaken the effort from the start.

“The most important thing is to never forget about the people within the organization”

For leaders commissioning an innovation programme, her experience raises practical questions. What is the person being hired to change? Which decisions can they influence? What support and funding will accompany the responsibility? Those questions deserve discussion before the organisation starts measuring the individual against an expectation nobody made explicit.

They also help established R&D and product teams understand how to work with the innovation function, rather than treating it as a separate source of entertaining ideas.

Recognise what repeated disappointment does

Almanza Ahari speaks openly about innovation fatigue. She describes the frustration of wanting to contribute while being unable to do the work she had set out to do. At the time of the interview, she had stepped into a temporary gaming-industry assignment after taking a break from innovation work.

She also describes a wider risk: colleagues who repeatedly propose improvements without being taken seriously may eventually leave. The organisation loses both their motivation and their knowledge.

Speaking publicly about these experiences is difficult. People may interpret an unsuccessful initiative as a personal failure. Almanza Ahari says others contacted her with fears about losing their jobs or damaging their standing in the profession. These are accounts from her experience, rather than a measure of how common the problem is.

Her reason for discussing them is to make the conditions around innovation visible. A failed initiative should prompt examination of the organisation as well as the person leading it.

Connect exploration to the core business

One organisational approach she discusses separates exploratory work from the activities sustaining the existing business. That separation can create space to investigate unfamiliar opportunities. It also creates a challenge: someone must help promising work scale, adapt and connect with the core organisation.

Without that connection, exploration can remain isolated. Without a budget the team can actually use, its independence may exist mostly on paper.

Almanza Ahari also argues for agreeing expectations about unsuccessful experiments in advance. Otherwise, leaders may encourage exploration and later judge its costs as though every project should have succeeded. The purpose of allocating money to uncertain work includes learning which paths are not worth pursuing.

This does not make every unsuccessful project valuable. It makes the basis for judging the work explicit before the outcome is known. Funding, authority and a route towards implementation need to support the same ambition.

Look for value people can experience

Her healthcare experience gives the discussion a grounded counterpoint. She describes how familiar technologies can become valuable when applied to a different setting, while stressing the need to understand the requirements of that setting. Something that works in one industry cannot simply be carried into another without investigation.

Her most memorable example comes from much earlier in her life. She recalls helping establish Movimiento Sonrisa in Cochabamba, with activities including a pharmacy, a clinic and accommodation where parents of children receiving care could stay for free.

“We never used the words 'innovation' or 'social innovation'”

Looking back, she recognises the work as innovation because of the value it sought to create. The story gives her criticism of theatre a clear reference point. An impressive title or a well-publicised initiative matters less than whether people can do something useful with it. For a company asking employees to build its future, that means making the support behind the ambition visible in everyday decisions.