You’re not an innovator. You’re just in the room.

You’ve got the job title. You’ve got the headcount. Maybe you’ve even got an “Innovation Lab” with whiteboards and a neon sign that says something mildly inspiring like “Fail Forward.”

But let’s be honest… When was the last time you built something new?

Not pitched it.
Not sponsored it.
Not forwarded it to a team and said, “Let’s explore this.”

Actually built something. From scratch. With uncertainty. With risk.
With no guaranteed outcome.

If you can’t remember the last time, you’re not innovating.
You’re managing the appearance of innovation.

Photo by Clark Tibbs on Unsplash

Your calendar is a lie.

Pull up your calendar right now. (No…seriously, have a look.)
Count how many hours this week you’re spending on:

• Planning

• Alignment

• Governance

• Internal presentations

• Executive updates

• Vendor scoping

• Slack pings and async comment threads

Now count how many hours you’re spending with customers, outside voices, or ideas that might actually break something. Or piss someone off.

What gets your time is your job.

And for most corporate innovation leaders, the calendar tells the truth…
Are you building the future?
Or are you protecting the present from being interrogated too deeply?

Innovation isn’t a role. It’s a behavior.

There’s a dangerous comfort that creeps in when your job is “innovation.” The title creates a false sense of motion. Perhaps even grandeur.

You’re standing close to the language of change.
You sit in the meetings where decisions (supposedly) get made.
You have license to talk about what's coming next.

But that doesn’t mean you’re doing the work.

Are you talking with customers to understand their behaviors?
Are you testing risky ideas with prototypes in front of real people?
Are you questioning the way your org measures success?
Are you saying anything that would get you kicked out of a QBR meeting?

Innovation isn’t something you’re assigned.
It’s something you do.
Consistently and habitually.

It’s how you approach your day, where you focus your energy, what you choose to notice, and what you’re willing to challenge.

Just because you’re in the room where innovation might happen doesn’t mean you’re the reason it does happen.

Have you stopped doing the things that made you good?

Remember when this work felt electric? When you were the one asking the off-the-wall questions that paused the meeting and stopped everyone in their tracks? Or when you were the one who built the thing no one expected?

You didn’t get into this space because you were great at approvals.

You got here because you were willing to challenge things. You hacked together prototypes on nights and weekends. Instead of waiting for permission, you went out and made something real.

That version of you still exists. But somewhere along the way, the decks got slicker. The questions got softer. The work got safer.

You started collecting ideas instead of pressure-testing them.
And no one stopped you.
Because this version of you is easier to manage.

But innovation isn’t safe. It doesn’t beg for polish.
Innovation requires provocation. It demands energy. It begs for risk.

This isn’t a callout. It’s a reminder. You were dangerous once. You can be again.

Want to be dangerous again?

Hopefully you’ve remembered what made you sharp. Now you need the discipline to hone that edge.

Innovation isn’t a quarterly initiative. It’s a set of daily, deliberate, and sometimes uncomfortable behaviors that keep you dangerous. That make you unpredictable in the best ways. That make you valuable not because of your title, but because of your actions.

If you want to reclaim your credibility as someone who drives real change, you have to get back to doing the actual work.

Here’s how…

Talk to people outside your industry. Regularly.

Book a call with someone in climate tech. Or healthcare. Or supply chain. Read something that has nothing to do with your OKRs.

Your next idea won’t come from benchmarking your peers. It’ll come from crashing your world into someone else’s.

Get out of the echo chamber.

Spend time with people who hate your product.

You don’t need more feedback from power users. You need the skeptics. The customers who tried you once and never came back.

That’s where the real insight lives.

Stop outsourcing this to research. Go dig up the pain yourself.

Ask a question in every meeting that makes someone uncomfortable.

Not to be annoying. To be necessary.

Ask the questions no one else wants to ask:
Why are we funding this?
What problem are we really solving?
What’s the fastest way to prove we’re wrong?

If your meetings feel smooth…push harder.

Block 2 hours a week for experiments. Real ones.

No pitch decks. No prototypes made by agencies. Just you and a blank slate.

Run a smoke test. Mock up a new flow. Cold-call a customer. Write a job-to-be-done and test it in five conversations.

If you’re not testing, you’re not learning. And if you’re not learning, you’re just decorating the same ideas with fluffy new buzzwords.

And if 2 hours per week isn’t enough, make it 4. Or a day.

Ship something every week.

A test.
A rough prototype.
A back-of-the-envelope sketch of a business model.

Anything that has shape and carries weight.

Ultimately, forward momentum won’t come from having “a pipeline.” It comes from motion. Make things. Share them. Learn something. Repeat.

And if you’re not sure what to build? Start by making a toy.

As we’ve said before, Make Toys, Not Technology. Toys are fast, playful, and provocative, but they carry little expectation of being scalable. They’re small enough to spark curiosity and clear enough to communicate an idea instantly. They invite interaction. They tell you what’s working (or not) without a business case.

You don’t need more decks. You need more toys.

When in doubt, make toys not technology.

Discover the transformative power of blending work with play in our latest blog post. Learn how integrating creativity and fun into your business model can fuel innovation, enhance employee morale, and inspire a dynamic work culture. Embrace the journey from routine to remarkable today.

www.apollo21.io/transmissions/when-in-doubt-make-toys-not-technology

Get comfortable with being uncomfortable.

Most of the things we don’t do are just excuses to avoid discomfort.

You could have skipped the deck and showed the results of a test. (But you didn’t.)
You could’ve run that experiment without permission. (But you didn’t.)
You could have talked to 10 customers this week. (But you didn’t.)

Because meetings are safe.
Because PowerPoints get approvals.
Because experiments get questioned.

Comfort is easy. But here’s what happens if you keep choosing comfort…

You become irrelevant.

Get comfortable with being uncomfortable. Future you will thank you.

Strategy lives in what you fund.
Your credibility lives in what you do.

Strategy vs. Reality

Why most strategies fail on contact with reality—and how shifting from deliberate to emergent can unlock real innovation.

www.innovatedisruptordie.com/p/strategy-vs-reality

We said it clearly in a recent edition: strategy lives in what you fund. (Click the link above for a refresher.) You can write all the vision decks you want, but if the money isn’t moving, the company isn’t innovating.

Let’s extend that lens inward: your impact lives in how you spend your time.

Are you “funding” the right activities with your time, energy, and attention? If someone audited how you actually spend your week, would they believe you work in innovation?

Or would they guess operations?

You can’t lead innovation if you’re not funding it with your time.

Click here to book today!