Leaders share 18 common innovation mistakes

Innovation is important in every industry, whether creating and developing new products and services, or improving your workflow. There is no one right way to innovate, but there are wrong ways. It’s easy to get stuck in a line of thinking or trying to control the process, making it more complex than it needs to be. We asked our Fast Company Impact Council members what common mistakes companies make when trying to innovate, and an alternative way to think about innovation. Just like the creative process, our members had unique understandings of what not to do, and how to do a better job. We share 18 of those inspirational ideas here. 1. DON’T LAYER INNOVATION WORK ON CURRENT WORK The most common mistake is expecting your existing team to handle innovation on top of their daily workload. That rarely works. Operational tasks always win because they’re urgent and someone’s waiting on them. I see that all the time—an innovation initiative gets pushed to next sprint, then the on