Most organisations want more innovation.
So they create innovation programmes.
Idea schemes.
Workshops.
Hackathons.
Innovation teams.
New processes designed to generate new thinking.
All of those things can help.
But I’ve been wondering whether innovation actually begins much earlier.
Before the workshop.
Before the process.
Before someone puts an idea onto a whiteboard.
It begins with a person making a choice.
Someone notices something that could be better.
They question an assumption.
They see an opportunity others haven’t noticed.
Then comes the important moment.
Do they do anything about it?
Do they speak?
Do they challenge?
Do they suggest something different?
Do they risk being wrong?
Or do they decide it’s easier to say nothing?
That moment is Human Agency in action.
This is where Human Agency becomes important: the ability of people to make helpful conscious choices and to act upon them.
And viewed through that lens, innovation starts to look rather different.
An organisation may employ extraordinarily creative people and still produce very little innovation.
Not because ideas don’t exist.
But because somewhere between having the idea and acting upon it, people make choices.
“They won’t listen.”
“We’ve tried this before.”
“That’s not my responsibility.”
“My manager won’t like it.”
“It’s safer to keep quiet.”
The idea hasn’t disappeared.
The choice to contribute it has.
That means innovation isn’t simply a question of creativity.
It’s also a question of agency.
And leadership matters enormously.
Leaders create many of the conditions in which those choices are made.
How do they respond when someone disagrees?
What happens when an experiment fails?
Do they genuinely want challenge, or only challenge that confirms what they already believe?
Does an employee need permission to improve something obviously within their capability?
Every response teaches people something about what happens when they exercise their Human Agency.
Over time, those lessons accumulate.
People either become more willing to contribute…
…or increasingly careful about doing so.
Perhaps that’s why two organisations employing equally capable people can produce very different levels of innovation.
One has learned how to release the ideas already inside the organisation.
The other may unknowingly be teaching people to keep them to themselves.
Innovation doesn’t begin with a process.
It begins with a person making a choice.
And perhaps the question for leaders isn’t simply:
“How do we generate more ideas?”
It is:
“What happens here when someone chooses to offer one?”
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