The Innovation Paradox: Why Most Companies Miss Their Moment

You were bold. You were scrappy. You were dangerous.

‍If you’ve ever worked inside a large, ambitious company—whether at the C-suite or down in the project trenches—you’ve likely felt it: that strange tension between success and stuckness. You’re surrounded by smart people, solid products, and more than enough resources to do something bold… and yet, somehow, bold never quite makes it past the next planning meeting.

Now, if that doesn’t sound like your world—if instead you’re surrounded by idiots, mediocre products, and zero budget—maybe pause here, polish your resume, or call your favorite executive recruiter. This post is about when everything should be working… but still somehow isn’t.

If you’re still reading, you’re probably facing a more elusive challenge—the kind that creeps in quietly, even as KPIs look great. That invisible friction that slows down even high-performing teams and gradually saps the momentum out of ambitious plans.

I’ve spent years inside rooms with enterprise leaders—operators, brand builders, technologists—across every industry you can imagine. In my role leading strategy and story at First Person, I’ve had the chance to see the patterns most people miss. And here’s one of the clearest:

No matter how different the business or the brand, the same seven challenges keep showing up. Quietly. Persistently. Choking progress and stalling innovation in even the most capable organizations.

This isn’t a complete list of everything that can go wrong. But it is a pattern. And if you’re seeing signs of slowdown despite good people, good products, and good intentions—these seven leadership challenges are likely part of the problem.

This post is the first in a series. I’ll unpack each of the challenges, one at a time—what they are, how to recognize them, and how to lead your organization through them with clarity, momentum, and story.

If you want the full overview, start with the Story at the Center White Paper. Trust me. It’s a shortcut worth taking.

But for now, let’s dig into one of the most common traps we see: The Innovation Paradox.

Innovation is one of the most overused—and underdelivered—promises in business. Companies claim it constantly. They invest in it. They build teams for it. But more often than not, what gets called “innovation” is actually just iteration. Optimization. A new feature wrapped in the language of transformation.

The Innovation Paradox:
Companies get bigger, smarter, and more resourced—and yet somehow become less capable of doing something truly new.

They fall in love with what worked. They build systems to protect it. They scale it, measure it, and reward it. And in the process, they slowly lose the instinct that made them dangerous in the first place.

You see it everywhere:
• Internal startup labs quietly absorbed into legacy systems
• Game-changing ideas reduced to roadmap bullet points
• Marketing teams trying to position a feature as a movement
• Bold internal bets launching with the energy of a product update

And it’s not because the people inside these companies aren’t smart or ambitious. They are. It’s because the system isn’t designed to make new ideas feel urgent—or coherent—anymore.

In startup mode, invention is survival. Every decision, every release, every pitch has weight. You’re chasing product-market fit or category-market fit with everything you’ve got. The story has to hit. The idea has to land. The team has to believe.

But once you scale? The urgency fragments. Bold becomes optional. And even the most promising ideas can get lost in the process. Not because they weren’t good enough—but because they didn’t come with a story big enough to break through.

Where the Paradox Shows Up

You might disagree with how I interpret the story behind each of these companies—but you can’t disagree with this:

Each of them, in their own way, got caught in the Innovation Paradox.

Some lost their lead. Some never earned it. And a few managed to wrestle it back.

Missed the boat
Kodak invented the digital camera. But invention alone didn’t save them. Protecting their core business—and underestimating how quickly consumer behavior would shift—left them vulnerable. They didn’t pause. They just got beat.

Early and gone
Quibi launched into a saturated market with a ton of money and very little differentiation. It wasn't solving a real problem. It tried to manufacture a category out of context—something TikTok and Instagram already owned organically. The innovation wasn’t the product—it was the hype.

Lost the thread (but not the game)
Peloton built a movement, a media platform, and a fiercely loyal subscriber base. But since 2021, they've lost nearly half of it. The story didn’t evolve as the world did. The hardware is still good. The content is still strong. But the emotional grip has loosened—and so has the growth.

Exploded and owned it
NVIDIA didn’t just ride the AI wave—they built the hardware that made it real. Their products are best-in-class, full stop. But instead of leading with performance stats, they led with a narrative: acceleration, enablement, infrastructure for the future. They didn’t just power the category—they became the category.

Reinvention at scale
GE was dropped from the Dow in 2018. But through one of the most dramatic unbundlings in modern business, GE split into three focused companies—each with a clear mission and renewed relevance. It wasn’t just survival. It was strategic reinvention. A new story. A new chapter. And a return to momentum.

Why Big Companies Struggle to Stay Dangerous

But this isn’t about blaming big companies. It’s about understanding the system.

In the beginning, innovation is oxygen. You’re chasing product-market fit. Telling a story with urgency because belief is the only currency you have. Every decision matters. Every release has weight. That’s when companies are at their most dangerous—because they have to be.

But scale changes the stakes. New ideas don’t feel essential anymore—they feel optional. Risk gets optimized out. Ideas get evaluated against quarterly goals instead of category opportunity. And slowly, the boldest things you’re working on become just another backlog item.

At scale, innovation doesn’t die—it gets buried under operational excellence. It becomes a pilot, a project, a slide in Q3 planning. What could’ve redefined a category ends up as a line item on a release log.

It’s not a people problem. It’s a systems problem. Most companies aren’t short on talent, ideas, or ambition. What they lack is the infrastructure to protect, elevate, and activate bold ideas once they emerge.

Here’s what that looks like in the real world:

Too many P&Ls
Every big idea has to survive the politics of multiple business units and competing priorities. By the time it launches, it’s been softened, reshaped, and reduced to something everyone can agree on—which usually means it’s safe and forgettable.

Risk gets optimized out
When a company is growing, the goal is to break through. Once it’s established, the goal becomes not screwing it up. That shift—from offense to defense—kills more innovation than failure ever did.

No story to hold the idea
Most internal ideas die in committee not because they’re wrong, but because no one knows what they’re for. When there’s no clear story connecting the idea to a larger purpose, it becomes just another initiative. And initiatives get deprioritized every day.

Bold becomes a backlog item
Even truly inventive ideas get sucked into process. They lose momentum while waiting on approvals, alignment, or resourcing. By the time they ship, they’re no longer a movement—they’re a feature.

And here’s the part no one wants to admit
The larger and more successful the company, the more this paradox compounds. Because scale adds structure. Structure adds friction. And friction slows everything down—especially the stuff that doesn’t have a clear home yet.

What Happens Next Is a Choice

If any of this feels familiar, that’s the point. The Innovation Paradox isn’t rare—it’s routine. And the hardest part is that most teams don’t see it until the urgency is gone.

But it doesn’t have to stay that way.

You don’t need a reorg or a moonshot R&D budget to get unstuck. What you need is to start noticing:

Are bold ideas quietly becoming features?

Is innovation a buzzword in your decks, or a real priority in your pipeline?

Do people across the org share the same sense of why?

Is your next move designed to compete—or to lead?

This is where change starts. Not with slogans. With awareness. With asking better questions. With making space for the real conversations that get buried under deliverables and dashboards.

Because here’s the truth: you already have what you need. The talent. The ambition. The opportunity. What’s missing isn’t capability—it’s clarity.

So look closer. Name what you see. And start pulling your team—your work—yourself—back into alignment with what made you dangerous in the first place.

The next platform shift, the next AI wave, the next disruption is coming.

And when it hits, companies will fall into two camps:

Those who optimize what they already do and those who reimagine what only they can do.

The first group will chase relevance.

The second will define it.

So ask yourself: Are we still dangerous?

The question isn’t whether you can innovate. It’s whether your story makes anyone care.

Because in the end, it’s not the best product that wins. It’s the company that tells the best truth—at the right time—in a way the world can feel.