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Hey there, innovation champions!

It’s that time of year when the pace seems to slow down, teams are cycling through vacation schedules, and there’s this collective exhale that happens across the tech world. But here’s what I’ve learned: summer isn’t a season to coast—it’s actually the perfect season to create.

Let me tell you a story about the summer after my first wedding, when I accidentally discovered one of the most important principles of innovation. I thought I was going to be a writer. What that mostly meant was reading about writing, thinking about writing, with intermittent fifteen-minute stretches of staring at my keyboard, feeling terrible about myself because brilliant prose wasn’t flowing effortlessly from my fingertips.

As a result, naturally, I started to procrastinate. A lot.

I bought some pretty papers at the local art store (feeling like a fraud, because, after all, I wasn’t an artist, so I didn’t belong in there!) with the idea of gluing the paper around leftover glass votives from the wedding favors to give as holiday gifts.

Then it occurred to me that if I cut shapes in the paper, it would make miniature luminaria!

But, ever the perfectionist, I didn’t want to “ruin” the fancy papers I’d purchased, so I started with the kraft paper that the fancy papers had been rolled up in. Not having an X-acto blade, I used a paring knife (which really hurt my fingers!) and quickly discovered that I wanted more of this!

Back to the art store I went, for X-acto knife, extra blades, and soon I was spending hours making paper cuts. I followed my curiosity, and natural fascination for the art form, and just kept going.

I couldn’t get enough that summer!

The Hidden Innovation Lab

What I didn’t realize at the time was that my procrastination had led me straight into a masterclass in what I now call the Create the Impossible™ framework. That summer of paper cutting became my accidental innovation lab.

Here’s what was happening: I was Playing Hard with materials and possibilities. I was Making Crap on kraft paper instead of waiting for the perfect conditions. And I was Learning Fast through immediate, tactile feedback.

Sound familiar? It should, because this is exactly what the most innovative tech teams do—except they often don’t realize they’re doing it.

Play Hard: The Summer Permission Slip

Summer gives us natural permission to play. The energy is different. People are more relaxed. Deadlines feel less crushing. This isn’t a coincidence—it’s an opportunity.

Your team’s next breakthrough might not come from another marathon planning session. It might come from spending fifteen minutes with actual craft supplies, building something ridiculous with pipe cleaners, or asking “What if we approached this like we were making paper luminaria?”

When was the last time your team had permission to be genuinely curious about something completely unrelated to your product roadmap? That’s where innovations hide.

Make Crap: The Kraft Paper Principle

I call it the Kraft Paper Principle: start with the throwaway material. Don’t wait for the fancy paper.

In my paper cutting story, I was afraid of “ruining” the expensive materials. So I grabbed the kraft paper that was literally going to be discarded. Best decision ever. It removed all the pressure and let me experiment freely.

How many of your team’s potentially game-changing ideas never see daylight because they’re not “ready for the fancy paper” yet?

Summer is kraft paper season. Use it.

Learn Fast: The Art Store Feedback Loop

The most telling part of my story? I was back at the art store the next day, buying better tools. Why? Because the work itself taught me what I needed.

Not a planning session. Not a requirements gathering meeting. The actual doing showed me the next step.

This is how innovation actually works. We don’t think our way to breakthroughs—we make our way to them.

Creating in Season

Here’s what summer teaches us about innovation: timing matters, but not in the way we think.

Summer isn’t about slowing down innovation—it’s about changing our relationship to it. It’s about working WITH the natural rhythms instead of against them.

When teams are rotating through vacations, when the pressure is a bit less intense, when there’s space for the unexpected—that’s not a bug in your innovation process. That’s a feature.

Your Summer Innovation Challenge

This week, I challenge you to embrace what I call “seasonal innovation.” Here are three ways to start:

1. Schedule Play Breaks: Block 15 minutes this week for your team to play with something completely unrelated to work. Origami, LEGO, pipe cleaners—anything that gets your hands moving and your brain out of analytical mode.
2. Create a Kraft Paper Culture: Identify one area where your team has been waiting for “perfect conditions” to start. What’s your kraft paper version? Start there.
3. Build Fast Feedback Loops: Like my quick trip back to the art store, what can you prototype this week that will teach you what tools you actually need?

Remember, innovation doesn’t happen because conditions are perfect. It happens because we create the conditions for curiosity, experimentation, and rapid learning.

That summer of paper cutting didn’t just give me a new hobby (which would ultimately lead to a 15-year business as a professional artist and calligrapher!)—it gave me a new way of understanding how breakthroughs actually work. Not through perfect planning, but through playful exploration. Not by avoiding mistakes, but by making them quickly and learning from them.

Your team’s next impossible solution might be hiding in this summer’s slowdown. But only if you’re willing to play, make some crap, and learn fast.

Stay curious, stay playful, and keep creating the impossible!

I’d love to hear from you: What’s one way your team could embrace “seasonal innovation” this summer? Click here to let me know!

Senior Leaders: Ready to turn your team’s summer slowdown into innovation acceleration? Book a complimentary Innovation Strategy Session and let’s explore how the Create the Impossible™ framework can transform your approach to seasonal innovation.

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The Canvas That Changed Everything

Hey there, innovation champions!

Imagine this scene for a moment: I’m standing in my studio, holding a pristine canvas I’d owned for years. Still wrapped in plastic. Still untouched.

Why? Because every time I looked at it, my inner gremlin whispered, “Who are you to paint on canvas? You’re not good enough for canvas.”

Sound familiar?

Back when I was a professional artist, I had grand intentions. I’d subscribe to art journals, bookmark calls for entry, dream about exhibitions. But here’s the embarrassing truth: I rarely actually submitted anything. The perfectionism and comparison trap had me so paralyzed that I’d rather dream about opportunities than risk the vulnerability of actually pursuing them.

Those gremlin voices — “You’re not good enough,” “Who do you think you are?” “That piece sucks!” — they were running the show.

The Day Everything Shifted

Fast forward to years later. I’d returned to art purely for joy, and I was experimenting with what would become my Creative Sandbox Way™ principles. On this particular day, I finally peeled that canvas out of its plastic prison.|

I pulled out ink, paint, brushes, fabric for collage. For maybe an hour, I went completely wild.

In the Hollywood version of this story, I’d create a masterpiece. In reality? It was absolutely, spectacularly ugly.

But here’s what changed everything: I didn’t let that bother me.

Because the experience of creating was pure magic. I felt like I was buzzing, like my feet were floating two inches off the ground. I wasn’t just in flow — I was in a state of complete, uninhibited joy.

From Ugly Canvas to Innovation Gold

Here’s the plot twist: although that canvas really was hideous after that first session, I kept working on it. Layer after layer, session after session. Today, it’s one of my favorite pieces.

This experience taught me something profound about innovation barriers. I was unconsciously practicing what I now call the Create the Impossible™ framework — even before I had the language for it.

Breaking Down the Innovation Barriers

The barriers to innovation aren’t technical. They’re psychological. They’re the same forces that kept me from submitting to art shows, that kept that canvas wrapped in plastic for years.

In the tech world, I see these barriers everywhere:

• Teams paralyzed by the need to have the “perfect” solution before starting
• Brilliant minds convinced they’re “not creative enough”
• Organizations where failure feels dangerous instead of educational
• The relentless pursuit of polish over progress

But what if we could systematically remove these barriers? What if we could create environments where breakthrough innovation becomes as natural as breathing?

The Create the Impossible™ Frameworkty

This is exactly what the Create the Impossible™ framework does. It’s built on three core principles that directly address the psychological barriers to innovation:

Step 1: Play Hard

Remember being four years old? You could build impossible structures with blocks, paint purple elephants, and create entire worlds from cardboard boxes. Somewhere along the way, we learned that “professional” means serious. That innovation requires suits and whiteboards and perfectly formatted presentations.

Play Hard challenges this. It’s about approaching problems with curiosity instead of anxiety, with experimentation instead of expectation.

When teams embrace play, they lower the stakes. They reduce fear of failure. They access divergent thinking — the kind that leads to breakthrough innovations.

Step 2: Make Crap

This might be the most revolutionary principle in innovation. We live in a culture obsessed with polish, with getting it right the first time. But innovation doesn’t work that way.

Every groundbreaking innovation started as someone’s “ugly canvas” — rough, imperfect, maybe even laughable.

Make Crap gives teams permission to create terrible first drafts, ugly prototypes, half-baked ideas. It’s the antidote to analysis paralysis. When you’re allowed to make crap, you actually start making things.

And here’s the secret: most “crap” isn’t actually crap. It’s just unfinished. It’s the raw material that becomes brilliance through iteration.

Step 3: Learn Fast

The third pillar transforms how we think about failure. Instead of something to avoid, failure becomes data. Every misstep becomes a stepping stone.

In traditional innovation cultures, failure often means project death. In a Learn Fast culture, failure means course correction. Teams become antifragile — they don’t just survive setbacks, they use them as fuel for breakthrough thinking.

The Compound Effect

When these three principles work together, something magical happens. Teams stop being afraid of imperfection. They start generating more ideas because the pressure is off. They iterate faster because they’re not attached to any single solution.

They develop what I call “innovation confidence” — the deep knowing that they can create solutions to problems they haven’t even imagined yet.

Your Innovation Barriers Assessment

Think about your current team or organization. Where do you see these barriers showing up?

• Are people waiting for perfect information before starting?
• Do team members hesitate to share “half-baked” ideas?
• Is there an unspoken pressure to have polished solutions in early-stage discussions?
• Do people avoid taking creative risks because failure feels too costly?

These are the invisible forces keeping breakthrough innovations locked away.

The Freedom to Create

When we systematically remove these barriers — when we give ourselves and our teams permission to Play Hard, Make Crap, and Learn Fast — we unlock something profound: the freedom to create.

Not just the freedom to execute someone else’s vision, but the freedom to imagine entirely new possibilities. The freedom to tackle problems that seem impossible. The freedom to innovate not just incrementally, but exponentially.

This is what I experienced that day with my ugly canvas. This is what thousands of teams are discovering through the Create the Impossible™ framework.

Your Challenge This Week

Choose one innovation barrier you’ve identified in your team or organization. This week, experiment with removing it:

If perfectionism is the barrier, try a “Make Crap Monday” session where the goal is to generate the worst possible solutions to a real problem.

If fear of failure is the issue, implement “learning sprints” where teams intentionally try approaches that might not work — and celebrate the learning regardless of outcome.

If play feels too frivolous, introduce 15-minute “play breaks” during problem-solving sessions. Build with LEGO®, try improv exercises, or doodle while brainstorming.

The goal isn’t perfection. It’s permission. Permission to think differently, create freely, and innovate without limits.

Because on the other side of those barriers? That’s where the impossible becomes inevitable.

Stay curious, stay playful, and keep creating the impossible—for everyone.

I’d love to hear from you: What’s one innovation barrier you’ve noticed in your team or organization? Or maybe you’ve experienced the freedom that comes from removing these barriers? Click here to let me know!

Senior Leaders: Ready to systematically remove innovation barriers and create the freedom to innovate? Book a complimentary Innovation Strategy Session and let’s explore how the Create the Impossible™ framework can transform your culture from perfectionism to breakthrough innovation.

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 Hey there, innovation champions!

Last week at a conference in DC, I heard a story that stopped me in my tracks. It was one of those moments that makes you realize how much you don’t know about the world around you.

A delegate from Yellowstone was sharing an experience from a community gathering back home. Let me paint the picture she described for me.

Picture this gorgeous gathering hall, filled with people from across the region. The energy is high, everyone’s connecting, and then someone decides to cap off the event with what seemed like the perfect unifying moment—a rousing rendition of “This Land Is Your Land.”

The whole crowd joined in. Voices rising together, that familiar melody filling the space. It felt… inspiring. Patriotic. Unifying.

But then something happened that made this delegate’s stomach drop.

One by one, the Indigenous folks in the crowd started getting up and walking out.

At first, she thought maybe it was coincidence. Maybe they had places to be. But as more people left—all Indigenous folks—it became clear this wasn’t about logistics.

As she shared this story with me, I could see how much it had affected her. And honestly? I’ve been thinking about it ever since.

When “Unity” Excludes

Here’s what I learned: While those lyrics—”this land is your land, this land is my land”—might sound like a beautiful vision of collective ownership to most of us, they tell a completely different story to Indigenous communities.

For people whose ancestors had this land taken by force, whose families were subjected to broken treaties and forced removals like the Trail of Tears, whose sacred sites are still being exploited for resource extraction—hearing “this land was made for you and me” doesn’t feel unifying.

It feels like erasure.

The song assumes what historians call “terra nullius”—the idea that this was empty land, nobody’s land, just waiting to be claimed. It operates within a settler-colonial framework that treats the current political structure as the starting point, ignoring the sovereignty that existed here for thousands of years.

Now, I want to be clear—Woody Guthrie wrote this song as a protest against inequality. It was actually his response to “God Bless America,” and he was trying to challenge the status quo. His intentions were good.

But impact matters more than intent, doesn’t it?

The Innovation Parallel

As I listened to this story, I couldn’t help thinking about how this shows up in innovation. How often do we create solutions, strategies, or even company cultures that feel inclusive to us, but completely miss the mark for others?

How often do we build our “This land is your land” moments without realizing we’re creating “terra nullius” in our organizations?

This connects directly to something I see all the time in my work with tech companies. Teams will spend months developing what they think is a brilliant innovation, only to discover it completely misses the needs of their actual users. Or worse—it actively excludes entire communities they never considered.

The Create the Impossible™ Framework Lens

This is where my Create the Impossible™ framework becomes crucial—but with a twist I want to explore today.

Usually, when I talk about Play Hard, I focus on embracing curiosity and joy in our creative process. But today I want to add another layer: playing hard means being curious about perspectives that aren’t like yours. It means asking questions that might be uncomfortable.

At that gathering, real play hard would have meant someone asking: “Wait—how might this song land with everyone in the room?” before launching into it.

Make Crap typically means giving ourselves permission to create imperfect first drafts. But in the context of inclusion, it means acknowledging that our first attempts at inclusive innovation will probably be clunky or incomplete—and that’s okay. The key is starting somewhere and being willing to iterate.

If the organizers at that community gathering had approached the closing moment with a “make crap” mindset, they might have said, “Let’s try this—and if it doesn’t land well, we’ll learn and do better next time.”

Learn Fast becomes about rapid iteration based on feedback from diverse voices. Not just learning from people who look and think like us, but actively seeking out perspectives that challenge our assumptions.

The Indigenous folks walking out? That’s feedback. That’s data. That’s an opportunity to learn fast if we’re paying attention.

Beyond Good Intentions

Here’s what I find fascinating about the situation the Yellowstone delegate described: the room was full of good people with good intentions. Everyone wanted unity. Everyone wanted to create a positive experience.

But good intentions without diverse perspectives often create innovations that exclude the very people we think we’re helping.

I see this pattern everywhere in tech. Teams of brilliant people who all come from similar backgrounds, working with the best of intentions, creating products that work beautifully for people like them—and completely miss the mark for everyone else.

The solution isn’t to feel guilty about this. The solution is to build systems that actively bring different perspectives into our innovation process from the very beginning.

Three Questions for Inclusive Innovation

So here are three questions I now ask myself—and encourage my clients to ask—throughout any innovation process:

1. Who isn’t in the room? Before we start singing “This Land Is Your Land,” who are we not hearing from? Whose voices aren’t represented in our planning, our brainstorming, our decision-making?
2. What assumptions are we making? What are we treating as universal truths that might actually be specific to our particular experience? What “terra nullius” moments might we be creating?
3. How might this land differently? For every innovation, every strategy, every team gathering—how might this be received by people who don’t share our background, our context, our story?

The Ripple Effect

Here’s what I’ve learned in my work: when you start building inclusion into your innovation process, something magical happens. You don’t just create better products for underrepresented communities—you create better products for everyone.

The curb cut effect is a perfect example. Curb cuts were originally designed for wheelchair accessibility. But they ended up helping parents with strollers, delivery workers with dollies, travelers with suitcases, and basically anyone who’s ever walked down a sidewalk.

When we innovate with diverse perspectives from the start, we don’t just expand our market—we uncover possibilities we never would have imagined.

Your Challenge This Week

So here’s my challenge for you this week: Look at whatever innovation challenge you’re currently working on and ask yourself those three questions.

Who isn’t in the room? What assumptions are you making? How might this land differently for different communities?

Then—and this is the crucial part—actually seek out those missing perspectives. Don’t just imagine what they might say. Find ways to include those voices in your process.

If you’re working on a new product feature, talk to users who don’t look like your typical customer. If you’re planning a team initiative, check in with the people who usually stay quiet in meetings. If you’re designing a company policy, consider how it might affect someone whose life circumstances are different from yours.

Remember, creating the impossible isn’t just about pushing the boundaries of what we think is technically feasible. Sometimes it’s about pushing the boundaries of who we think our innovations are for.

The Path Forward

I’ll be honest—I can’t unlearn what I learned from that delegate’s story. And I’m grateful for that. Because now I have a lens I didn’t have before. A way of seeing that makes me a better innovation strategist, a better colleague, and hopefully, a better human.

That moment of discomfort when she described watching those delegates walk out? That’s where growth lives. That’s where real innovation begins—when we’re willing to sit with the discomfort of realizing our good intentions might not be enough.

The most powerful innovations happen when we embrace diverse perspectives not as a nice-to-have, but as the secret ingredient that transforms good ideas into breakthroughs that actually serve the world.

Stay curious, stay playful, and keep creating the impossible—for everyone.

I’d love to hear from you: What’s one assumption about your current innovation process that you’re now questioning? Click here to let me know!

Senior Leaders: Ready to unlock your team’s full innovation potential through inclusive practices? Book a complimentary Innovation Strategy Session and let’s explore how diverse perspectives can transform your organization’s approach to creativity and problem-solving.

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Hey there, innovation champions! Melissa Dinwiddie here.

When you were a kid, did you ever experience a blackout, or a hurricane, that disrupted normal life for a bit? Maybe you had to go without electricity or water for a day or two.

If it’s for a short time, that kind of thing can actually be almost like a forced vacation in a way. You can’t work, because you have no power, and suddenly you have to think of new ways to do things you normally do on autopilot.

Lighting candles instead of reaching for a light switch.

Digging in cupboards for a camping stove, if you have one, instead of using the rangetop or microwave.

You have to get creative.

And in the immediate aftermath, when all your energy is focused on solving your immediate needs, you’re firing on all cylinders. Your brain is sharp, your problem-solving is laser-focused, and somehow you find ingenious solutions you never would have thought of under normal circumstances.

But what happens when the emergency keeps dragging on?

Innovation thrives on pushing against challenges. But it does not thrive on burnout.

The Hidden Threat to Sustained Innovation

Here’s what I’ve learned working with tech teams over the past several years: the same pressure that initially sparks innovation can become its biggest enemy if we don’t manage it properly.

Think about it. In the early days of a crisis—whether it’s a natural disaster or a business emergency—adrenaline kicks in. Teams rally together. Hierarchy flattens as everyone focuses on the immediate problem. People feel empowered to try wild solutions because the usual rules don’t apply.

But crisis mode isn’t sustainable. And here’s where most organizations get it wrong: they try to maintain that crisis-level intensity indefinitely, thinking that’s the secret to sustained innovation.

It’s not. It’s the recipe for creative burnout.

I see this pattern repeatedly in the organizations I work with. Teams start strong during a crisis or major challenge, but after months of maintaining that intensity, their most creative people become exhausted. The constant pressure to innovate paradoxically kills their ability to innovate. They get stuck in reactive mode, too depleted to think strategically or imagine new possibilities.

Sound familiar?

The Peak Innovation Paradox

This is what I call the Peak Innovation Paradox: the very conditions that create breakthrough innovation—urgency, pressure, resource constraints—can also destroy our capacity for sustained creativity if we don’t understand how to work with them.

Think of it like physical fitness. A challenging workout can make you stronger, but if you never allow for recovery, you’ll eventually break down. Your innovation capacity works the same way.

The key isn’t avoiding pressure or challenges—it’s learning how to cycle through them in a way that builds resilience rather than depleting it.

This is where my Create the Impossible™ framework becomes essential for maintaining creative momentum over the long haul.

Play Hard: The Recovery Revolution

The first principle, Play Hard, is often the first thing teams abandon when they’re under pressure. “We don’t have time for play,” they say. “This is serious business.”

But here’s what neuroscience tells us: play isn’t the opposite of serious work. It’s what makes serious work sustainable.

When we’re in constant crisis mode, our brains get stuck in what researchers call “threat rigidity”—we can only see a narrow range of solutions, usually ones that worked in the past. Play literally rewires our neural pathways, helping us see new possibilities and connections.

Imagine a team that’s been grinding for months on a complex technical challenge. Everyone’s exhausted, tensions are high, and creative thinking has flatlined. What if, instead of pushing harder, they instituted something like “Failure Fridays”—spending an hour each week sharing their biggest failures and turning them into learning opportunities, maybe even comedy skits?

It might sound frivolous when you’re under pressure, but research shows that this kind of purposeful play can dramatically improve both innovation output and team retention.

The key is making play purposeful. It’s not about ping pong tables and bean bags—though those can be nice. It’s about creating structured opportunities for mental recovery and perspective-shifting.

Make Crap: Permission to Recharge

The second principle, Make Crap, becomes even more crucial when you’re trying to maintain momentum over time. When teams are exhausted, perfectionism becomes their worst enemy.

Picture a team that’s been iterating on a product redesign for months. Every prototype has to be “perfect” before they’ll show it to stakeholders. The pressure is paralyzing them—they’re spending more time polishing than innovating.

What if they instituted something like “Ugly Tuesday”—a weekly session where they have to present the ugliest, most half-baked version of their ideas? No PowerPoint slides, no polished mockups. Just rough sketches and honest conversations about what they’re trying to solve.

This kind of systematic permission to be imperfect often unlocks rapid progress. When you remove the pressure to have everything polished, you free up mental energy for actual innovation instead of endless refinement.

When you’re managing creative momentum over time, you need to build in systematic permission to produce work that isn’t ready for prime time. It’s like clearing the creative pipes—you have to get the mediocre ideas out before the brilliant ones can flow.

Learn Fast: The Momentum Multiplier

The third principle, Learn Fast, is what transforms short-term innovation spurts into sustained creative momentum. But here’s the crucial distinction: learning fast doesn’t mean moving fast. It means extracting maximum insight from every experiment, every failure, every small success.

Too many teams confuse activity with progress. They’re constantly launching new initiatives, pivoting every month, chasing the next shiny opportunity. But they never slow down long enough to understand what’s actually working and why.

Imagine a scale-up that’s launching a new feature every two weeks. Sounds impressive, right? But what if 80% of those features are barely being used? They’d be innovating fast, but not learning fast.

A better approach might be learning sprints. Every two weeks, instead of launching something new, the team does a deep dive on one recent launch: What worked? What didn’t? What surprised them? What would they do differently?

This kind of systematic learning often reveals that sustainable innovation isn’t about constant novelty—it’s about building on what you discover works.

The Rhythm of Sustainable Innovation

Here’s what I’ve learned after watching countless teams try to maintain creative momentum: innovation needs rhythm. It’s not a marathon run at sprint pace—it’s more like interval training.

You need periods of intense focus and experimentation, followed by periods of reflection and consolidation. You need time to play and explore, followed by time to execute and refine. You need space to make crap, followed by time to polish the gems you’ve discovered.

Most importantly, you need to treat your creative capacity like the renewable resource it is. It can be depleted, but it can also be restored—if you understand how to work with it rather than against it.

The teams that maintain creative momentum over years, not just months, are the ones that have learned to cycle through the Create the Impossible™ framework deliberately and systematically. 

They don’t just play hard when they feel like it—they schedule it. They don’t just make crap when they’re stuck—they build it into their process. They don’t just learn fast when they fail—they extract insights from every experience.

Your Innovation Sustainability Challenge

So here’s your challenge for this week: Take a step back and assess the rhythm of innovation in your team or organization.

Are you trying to maintain crisis-level intensity indefinitely? Are you giving your team permission to play, to experiment, to learn from imperfection?

Look at your calendar. Where are the built-in recovery periods? Where are the scheduled times for exploration and experimentation? When was the last time someone on your team was celebrated for an interesting failure rather than just successful outcomes?

Remember: Peak innovation isn’t about reaching maximum intensity and staying there. It’s about finding the sustainable rhythm that keeps your creative momentum flowing over time.

And in our AI-driven world, where change is the only constant, this ability to maintain creative momentum isn’t just nice to have—it’s your competitive advantage.

The companies that will thrive aren’t the ones that burn brightest for a moment, but the ones that can sustain their innovative fire year after year.

Stay curious, stay playful, and keep creating the impossible!

I’d love to hear from you: What’s one thing that’s helped you maintain creative momentum during challenging times? Click here to share your approach!

Senior Leaders: Ready to build sustainable innovation into your organization’s DNA? Book a complimentary Innovation Strategy Session and let’s explore how the Create the Impossible™ framework can help your team maintain creative momentum without burning out.

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Hey there, innovation champions!

My brother and sister-in-law just celebrated their anniversary. Not a “big” one, but as I called to wish them well and asked if they were celebrating, my brother said they were helping their teenage son with homework. So… that would be a no.

But every time their anniversary rolls around, it sends me straight back to one of the most stressful—and ultimately transformative—moments of my creative career.

The Disaster That Changed Everything

Picture this: I’m creating their ketubah—their Jewish marriage contract—and I’ve bitten off way more than I can chew. My brother studied Japanese in college and went to graduate school in East Asian Studies. His bride studied Chinese. So naturally, they chose a garden theme combining elements of classical Japanese and Chinese scholar’s gardens.

And I, always stretching my creative ambitions, decided to tackle it as a three-dimensional paper sculpture.

I thought I had months for this herculean project, with a Labor Day weekend wedding… but in April, plans changed. Suddenly it was Memorial Day weekend. Instead of months, I had mere weeks!

I worked like mad. Everything was perfect except for the final element—a complicated multi-windowed mat with complex curves that would complete the piece.

Remember, this was before digital cutting technology existed, so I’m attempting to hand-cut intricate curves with an X-acto blade at a consistent angle.

When I flipped that mat over to see the result… disaster. Complete, unacceptable disaster.

I stomped out of the room, tears flooding my eyes. For fifteen minutes, I swore, cried, and screamed. What was I going to do?

The Breakthrough Hidden in the Breakdown

But here’s where the magic happened—and where this story becomes about more than just one panicked artist.

I had no choice but to tackle the problem. No time for a new mat. No resources for a do-over.

So I started slicing away at the edges of that “ruined” mat, bit by bit… and ultimately created an uneven, intentionally hand-cut, irregularly scalloped edge that proved far more interesting and charming than any machine-cut mat could ever have been!

My awful mistake had led to the most innovative element of the entire piece.

Why This Matters for Your Innovation Culture

Now, you might be thinking, “That’s a nice story, Melissa, but what does this have to do with building lasting innovation cultures?”

Everything.

Because what happened in my studio that day illustrates the three essential elements of cultures that don’t just innovate once, but keep innovating for decades. And it maps perfectly to my Create the Impossible™ framework:

Play Hard: When Pressure Meets Possibility

The first element is “Play Hard”—not in the Vegas sense, but in the sense of maintaining curiosity and experimentation even under pressure.

In that moment of crisis, I could have given up. I could have called my brother and said, “Sorry, I can’t finish this.” Instead, I played with the disaster.

Organizations that build lasting innovation cultures do the same thing. When Amazon’s Fire Phone flopped spectacularly, they didn’t retreat from hardware innovation. They played with what they’d learned and created Alexa—one of their most successful products ever.

The question for your organization: When things go sideways, do you retreat to safety, or do you play with the possibilities hidden in the problem?

Make Crap: The Courage of Imperfection

The second element is “Make Crap”—giving yourself permission to create imperfect solutions rather than waiting for perfection.

That scalloped edge wasn’t what I’d planned. It wasn’t “perfect.” But it was exactly what the piece needed.

Companies with lasting innovation cultures understand this deeply. They know that breakthrough solutions rarely emerge from careful planning—they emerge from the willingness to try imperfect approaches and iterate quickly.

3M’s Post-it Notes came from a “failed” adhesive that wasn’t strong enough for its intended purpose. Rather than throwing it away, they played with its imperfection and discovered something revolutionary.

The question for your team: Are you creating space for beautiful imperfections, or are you so focused on avoiding mistakes that you’re also avoiding breakthroughs?

Learn Fast: Building on What Breaks

The third element is “Learn Fast”—extracting insights from every experience, especially the challenging ones.

That ketubah disaster taught me something profound: some of our best innovations come not from our successes, but from how we respond to our failures.

Organizations with lasting innovation cultures have mastered this art. They’ve created systems for learning from setbacks, not just celebrating successes.

When Netflix’s Qwikster announcement was met with massive customer backlash, they didn’t just retreat. They learned fast, adapted their approach, and emerged stronger with their streaming-first strategy.

The question for your culture: Do you have systems in place to extract learning from every experiment, especially the ones that don’t go as planned?

The Anniversary Test: Does Your Innovation Culture Have Staying Power?

Here’s what I’ve learned from working with companies that innovate consistently over decades versus those that have occasional flashes of brilliance: The difference isn’t in the initial innovation. It’s in whether they’ve built cultures that can sustain and renew themselves.

Think of it as the “anniversary test.” Marriages that last aren’t the ones that had perfect weddings—they’re the ones that learned to navigate challenges together, to play through difficulties, to embrace imperfection, and to keep learning from each experience.

Innovation cultures are the same. They’re not built on avoiding problems—they’re built on having frameworks for transforming problems into possibilities.

Your Legacy Challenge

So here’s your challenge as we think about building innovation cultures that last:

Look at the last setback your team experienced. Not the catastrophic failure that everyone talks about, but the everyday disappointment. The project that didn’t go as planned. The idea that didn’t work out.

Now ask yourself:

• Did your team play with the problem or retreat from it?
• Were you willing to try imperfect solutions, or did you wait for the perfect answer?
• What did you learn, and how are you applying that learning to future challenges?

Because here’s the thing about innovation legacies: They’re not built from your successes. They’re built from how you respond when things don’t go according to plan.

That ketubah still hangs in my brother’s home, nearly three decades later. And every time I see it, I’m reminded that our most lasting innovations often come from our willingness to transform disasters into discoveries.

Your innovation culture’s anniversary test isn’t whether you can avoid mistakes—it’s whether you can transform them into your most charming and innovative elements.

Stay curious, stay playful, and keep creating the impossible!

I’d love to hear from you. What’s one “disaster” that led to an unexpected innovation in your organization? Click here to share your approach!

Senior Leaders: Ready to build an innovation culture with staying power? Book a complimentary Innovation Strategy Session and let’s explore how the Create the Impossible™ framework can help your organization develop the resilience to innovate consistently, year after year.