The PostPod - Lessons From Fiona Stevenson. Why Innovation Fails.
EP 233 · Sep 3, 2026 · 22 min · Marc & V
0:00 / 21:52
The short version
Everyone wants innovation. But what exactly are we asking for?
In this Post-Pod, Marc and Vassilis unpack their conversation with Fiona Stevenson, co-author of Built for Breakthrough, and start with one of the simplest problems: organizations frequently use the word “innovation” without agreeing on what it actually means.
Breakthrough? Disruption? A game changer? Incremental growth? A new tactic?
That distinction matters because, as Fiona argued, an idea doesn't become innovation until it is implemented and creates value.
From there, the conversation turns to the organizational conditions that innovation requires. Marc and V discuss why teams rush to solutions before properly understanding the problem, why genuine innovation creates fear, and how the pursuit of certainty can push organizations toward safer incremental improvements.
They also revisit Fiona's Six I's framework:
Identify → Insights → Inspiration → Ideation → Iteration → Implementation
Rather than treating those stages as a checklist, Vassilis argues they should be viewed as multipliers. Skip one and you risk weakening the entire system.
The conversation closes with two bigger questions.
First, if innovation requires focused thinking, why do we expect it to happen between back-to-back meetings?
And second, if AI is giving us unprecedented productivity gains, will we use that extra capacity to explore new possibilities — or simply fill it with more of the same work?
A Post-Pod about innovation, uncertainty, AI, marketing and why being busy isn't the same thing as building the future.
Chapters
00:00 Welcome to the Post-Pod
00:21 Why “Innovation” Means Different Things to Everyone
01:43 What Kind of Innovation Are We Actually Asking For?
02:24 Defining Innovation Before Starting the Work
02:53 An Idea Isn't Innovation Until It Creates Value
04:04 Are We Solving Before Understanding the Problem?
04:47 The Optimization Trap
06:42 Why Fear Kills Innovation
08:39 Why Incremental Innovation Feels Safer
10:04 Fear Creates Overanalysis
10:21 “How Might We?” vs. “We Should”
11:10 Fiona's Six I's of Innovation
11:40 Innovation as a Multiplicative System
12:53 Is Intuition the Seventh I?
13:20 How Marketing and Innovation Overlap
14:28 Should Marketing Be an Innovation Function?
17:39 Innovation Doesn't Happen Between Meetings
18:32 Are We Using AI for Efficiency or Growth?
19:48 Why AI Should Create Possibility
20:08 AI Increases the Need for Discernment
20:55 Final Thoughts
Chapters
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Transcript
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SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Sleeping Baba podcast.
SPEAKER_02: Incremental innovation is from what I can recall, like it is the vast majority of the kinds of innovation that happen. Meaning people are iterating and slightly improving something that already exists. And I think a lot of times it's kind of like sequels and movies. People do them because they're low risk. And you know, they already made a whole money. That's why there's 14,000 adventures now.
SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Sleeping Barber Podcast, a place for business leaders to get the best and most credible information on marketing, strategy, and innovation. Your hosts, Mark Finkley and Vasilis Duros, share their experiences as they gather insights from the world's leading experts. Now, on with the show.