January 22nd, 2025 | Adam Concar, Executive Creative Director
The team delivers. The product is ready. Stakeholders celebrate. Another launch, another step forward. On the surface, everything is moving in the right direction. But look closer and you’ll find a disconnect.
The research
We surveyed 133 tech companies to understand their biggest challenges and priorities.
Respondents said their challenges in the next 2-3 years were:
- Raising funding – 32%
- Product innovation 25%
- Customer acquisition – 19%
- Recruitment challenges -16%
- Achieving product-market fit – 8%
- Delivering first customer production lines – 1%
This is a broad spectrum of challenges, with more than half related to creating a positive perception of the product and company.
However, to achieve success, 78% said they needed to focus on innovation and product development.
Something doesn’t add up. Why devote most of your focus to a problem representing only a fraction of your challenges?
The innovation reflex
Innovation seems to have become a default response; what companies do because it feels like progress, not necessarily because it solves their most urgent, pressing challenges.
A new product gives people something to point to, a way to prove progress. It’s more manageable than brand and marketing, customer success, leadership development, and even customer acquisition. These are not challenges that can be engineered away.
But when innovation becomes the singular focus, it’s easy to equate activity with impact. But what are the opportunity costs? What got shelved in the process? This starts to add up:
- Teams fractured by disunity and conflict
- A culture that feels uninspired or unclear about its purpose
- Customers who are confused about what the offer is
- Business decisions that drift further and further from the company’s long-term vision
In these moments, innovation risks becoming a distraction, shifting the focus away from what truly needs fixing. When innovation is used as a quick fix to cover up deep-rooted problems, it builds on a bad foundation.
The underlying issue
The challenge increasingly isn’t new ideas and products/features. What’s missing is something more foundational. It’s the alignment around who the company is, the clarity on what matters most, and the courage to focus on those priorities, even when they’re harder to measure or manage.
These are a few of our findings from our recent research. A full report will be released in the next few weeks. It explores the gap between what companies say they struggle with and what they actually prioritise. It will ask tough questions about why innovation has become the default answer and what it might look like to shift the focus.
This isn’t about dismissing innovation. It’s about seeing it in context. Progress isn’t always about launching something new. Sometimes, it’s about addressing what’s already here, strengthening the foundations, resolving tensions, and creating alignment.
When innovation is driven by that level of clarity and purpose, it’s more than just a new product. It’s a step forward that truly matters. Let’s stop treating innovation as an end in itself and start using it as a tool to build something deeper, something more meaningful.