Imagine an executive team gathering to discuss its most urgent strategic priority: artificial intelligence. The CEO wants AI to become a new engine of growth. The CIO wants to deploy copilots. The COO sees opportunities to automate processes. The head of product wants AI-enabled offerings. The CHRO is worried about how AI will reshape work. Everyone agrees that AI is the future. Everyone agrees that the company needs to innovate. And everyone leaves the meeting talking about something different.
This is increasingly the real innovation problem inside large organizations. We use one word, “innovation,” to describe fundamentally different kinds of work. Adopting a technology. Improving a process. Launching a product. Creating a business model. Transforming an organization. Responding to a crisis. Everyone uses the same word and assumes alignment. There isn’t any.
I’ve been called the “Dean of Innovation” for nearly four decades, although the title started more as a bit of good-natured ribbing than a credential. I was 27 and Vice President of New Ventures at Domino’s Pizza during the company’s explosive growth in the 1980s when I attended a retreat with Tom Peters, the legendary business author. Somehow “Dean of Innovation” emerged from the gathering, and my older colleagues at Domino’s found it amusing enough to make it stick. Since then, I’ve worked with much of the Fortune 500, the U.S. military, and more cultural organizations than I can remember. After decades of tours of duty inside organizations trying to make innovation actually happen, I’ve become convinced of one thing: almost nobody means the same thing when they use the word.
