Why Most Companies Get Innovation Completely Wrong

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

Key Takeaways

- Real innovation comes from the people closest to the work — not from executives or consultants designing strategies from afar.

- When people who deeply understand their work are given the right tools (like AI or automation), they can solve problems efficiently, improve quality and even enhance business outcomes.

- A leader’s job isn’t to design innovative solutions from the top, but to make sure nothing stands in the way of the people who will. That means creating an environment where people feel safe to experiment.

Every company has an innovation strategy. Most are wrong; not because the ideas are terrible, but because they often begin in the wrong places. They often start in a boardroom with a pricey consultant’s presentation, rather than with the person in your prospective customer’s organization who is quietly struggling with a broken process that no one cared enough about to understand or repair.

I learned this by speaking with a woman I met at a user conference several years ago. This is in many ways her story — what she told me about her job fundamentally informs my perspective on technology, leadership and where real change often comes from.

The part most never think about

In a large enterprise, close to half of all deals are frequently closed in the very last week of the quarter, many in the final hour(s). Predictably, the sales organization gets the spotlight for landing those deals.

However, behind every signed contract is someone who has to pull information from numerous systems, cross-check with legal, verify with finance and chase compliance threads across dozens of systems. It is complex, high-risk work that is often performed under strict deadlines that couldn’t care less how many threads you’re juggling.

She was one of those people. She processed possibly hundreds of contracts every quarter, and the last two to three weeks in each quarter was working past midnight and waking up early the next day to begin again. She had young kids whom she rarely saw during those periods. The frustrating thing wasn’t that she was bad at her job — in fact, she was very good at her job. It was the process that would wear people down.

Taking initiative

She had heard about AI and intelligent automation — not simple macros but true automation tools that could pull data from other systems, process and analyze that data, and then move forward in a workflow. So without a mandate, without a budget, without asking anyone’s permission, she began to build.

She created what we would now call an AI agent. These “agents” took care of the mechanical aspects of her workflow — pulling documents, processing them for the right data, closing tickets, submitting paperwork and routing for signatures. It changed everything. She was able to focus on complex judgment calls that truly needed her expertise while delegating the busywork. She even gave her creation a name, “Connie,” a play on the word Contract Ops.

The end results were astonishing. She was able to accomplish her work 10 times faster. Not only that, but the quality of her output improved. And, most importantly for her, she was able to spend more time with her family during quarter-end.

Spreading without a mandate

She didn’t pitch this to leadership. She didn’t submit a formal proposal. Yet, in a matter of days, a team of 20 was using her agent.

And of course they were. The solution quickly rolled through the financial department since the people adopting it were dealing with the same pain. And when a contract can’t get signed in the right quarter, revenue slips. For large enterprises, we’re talking millions of dollars. Her solution didn’t just improve her quality of life — it directly protected the business.

The pattern that changed how I lead

That conversation has stayed with me over the years. I’ve seen the same dynamic everywhere I’ve led teams. The best innovations never start with someone thinking, “I’m going to build something that goes viral across my entire company.” They start with one person saying to themselves, “I currently have to do this thing twice every morning, but what if I only had to do it once?“

That’s it. It’s that small.

What makes these kinds of solutions so powerful is that the person building them is the domain expert. They understand the work deeply in a way that no consultant or executive ever could.

It’s not about knowing software or understanding programming; those skills are almost irrelevant, especially today with the tools we have. It’s about knowing your job extremely well. A lawyer who knows contract law. An ops person who understands procurement. A finance analyst who can reconcile in their sleep. When people solve their own friction, the solution fits because they built