Three simple steps to building a culture of innovation

There isn’t a CEO alive who hasn’t been told to “Innovate or die.”

But knowing you need to innovate to survive doesn’t make it easier.

Kodak and HMV are just two examples of companies that saw disruption coming. Both had time, resources, and clear warning signs. And yet both collapsed. It’s not that they lacked vision. The issue was execution, or more precisely, a lack of a solid product innovation strategy.

When performance dips, many organisations respond by cutting costs or doubling down on what’s already working. It’s seen as safer than investing in something new. And when innovation is explored, it often comes with unclear direction, like:

Can we do more of the same… only completely differently this time?

Innovation can feel like a risky bet. What if you spend months building something no one needs? But avoiding innovation isn’t without risk either. Competitors move fast. Customer expectations shift. Without continuous progress, even the most established businesses lose ground.

A structured, low-risk approach to innovation can break this deadlock. These three steps help organisations build momentum and confidence without gambling the future.

1. Start by starting

The first step in any product innovation strategy is action. Too often, companies overthink the plan and delay progress. Workshops get booked. Decks get built. Alignment becomes the goal rather than the means to an end.

That’s why starting with a small, real project is far more powerful than theorising.

Instead of fixating on the perfect brief, begin with a single problem and a rough hypothesis. Your goal isn’t to design a final product but to learn quickly. This could be a single feature prototype, a service pilot, or even a reworked internal process. What matters is momentum.

The best product management strategy supports this. It builds in time for learning, encourages iteration, and prevents teams from stalling while they wait for more certainty. Because certainty rarely comes before progress, it usually follows it.

B2B companies, in particular, often face internal pressure to wait until “everything is aligned.” The reality is that early alignment is often overrated. Once you start testing and get something in front of users or internal stakeholders, real alignment begins to form around what’s working.

One effective way to approach this is through early assumption mapping. This helps teams identify and prioritise which beliefs need to be validated before development. It also helps avoid blind spots in the planning stage and shifts the team’s mindset towards exploration.

2. Start small

Launching a bold new product or service can be tempting, but the risks often outweigh the reward. The real magic happens when teams focus on learning early, not launching big.

That’s why most high-performing teams begin with small bets. Rather than investing months in product development, they build a single prototype or run a targeted experiment. This approach reduces risk while unlocking learning.

Small bets create momentum and buy-in. When stakeholders see results quickly, even from rough early experiments, they’re more likely to support scaling efforts. Small doesn’t mean insignificant. It means focused, fast, and flexible.

In practice, this might look like:

• A 24-hour product sprint to prototype a new client dashboard
• A 2-week test of a reworked signup flow using shadow traffic
• A limited internal rollout of a redesigned reporting tool

This method supports a healthy innovation culture by making progress visible. Instead of “innovation theatre” where nothing ships, teams build a track record of learning and decision-making. It’s especially powerful in B2B, where teams need clear rationale to shift priorities.

Another overlooked benefit of starting small is that it builds team confidence. Quick wins create psychological safety to try more ambitious things. You don’t need to overhaul the entire experience in one go. Improving a single interaction, like reducing the steps in a quote builder, can deliver real business value.

3. Foster an innovative culture

Too many organisations treat innovation like a side project, an experiment separate from their core delivery teams. But if innovation only lives in a lab, it won’t last.

This means embedding innovation capabilities within teams. The goal is not just to run a great project, but to leave behind a team that can keep experimenting and learning without outside help.

For that to happen, the team needs three things:

• A shared process for testing and validating ideas
• A culture that encourages learning over perfection
• Space in the roadmap for experimentation

The right product innovation strategy goes beyond tooling or workflows. It builds habits and systems that allow innovation to flourish without constant top-down pressure.

It also means redefining what success looks like. Instead of only measuring delivery milestones, track how many ideas were tested, what was learned, and what those lessons influenced. These are the real signals of an innovation-ready team.

This mindset shift is crucial for organisations that want to stay competitive. A modern product management strategy doesn’t only protect delivery timelines, it builds room for discovery alongside them. The result is more confident decision-making and fewer wasted efforts.

A long-term approach to innovation requires consistency, not chaos. The more teams can develop structured rituals — like biweekly idea reviews or monthly reflection sessions — the more sustainable innovation becomes.

Sustained innovation doesn’t come from one big idea. It comes from a rhythm of testing, learning, and evolving. That rhythm is only possible when teams are empowered to start small, act fast, and adjust quickly.

The reality is that innovation doesn’t require massive investment or top-down reinvention. It requires clarity, commitment, and a willingness to learn before trying to scale.

Creating space for experimentation, and protecting it, is a leadership responsibility. But building the capabilities to carry it forward belongs to everyone.

If you’re working on your own product innovation strategy, it’s worth asking: Do our teams feel confident to experiment? Are we learning fast enough to stay relevant? And are we making it easier for innovation to happen, or harder?

Curious how other product leaders are doing it?

Join us at ManyHands where we explore what innovation looks like in real product environments. Take part in honest conversations with product teams working through the same challenges you are.