Narrator: Imagine an innovation expert invited to speak at a major corporation in 2006. The room is electric, filled with employees buzzing with genuine excitement. They are eager to break barriers and try new things. Now, fast forward to 2018. The same expert is at a similar company, facing a similar audience. But this time, the mood is different. As he’s introduced, he sees dejected faces and hears someone mutter, “Oh no, not this again.” The energy has been replaced by exhaustion, the excitement by exasperation. This stark contrast illustrates a widespread corporate sickness: innovation fatigue.

In his book, Innovation for the Fatigued, author and professor Alf Rehn diagnoses this problem, arguing that our obsession with the idea of innovation has created a shallow, buzzword-filled industry that actively stifles the very creativity it claims to champion. He provides a roadmap for moving beyond superficial performances and building a culture of deep, meaningful creativity from the ground up.

Narrator: The modern corporate world is drowning in innovation talk. With over a hundred new books on the topic published every month and endless lists of the "most innovative companies" that feature the same handful of names like Apple and Google, the term has been repeated so often it has lost its meaning. This has given rise to "innovation fatigue," a state of cynicism and exhaustion among employees who have been subjected to countless workshops, seminars, and initiatives that promise transformation but deliver little more than clichés.

Rehn distinguishes between two types of innovation. Shallow innovation is about style over substance. It’s about using the right buzzwords, attending the right conferences, and creating the appearance of progress. Deep innovation, in contrast, is about creating meaningful change, solving complex problems, and challenging the status quo. The problem is that many organizations are trapped in the shallows.

To illustrate this, Rehn tells the story of being invited to run a workshop for the executive team of a major IT corporation. Finding them too agreeable, he decided to conduct an experiment. He delivered a 20-minute lecture filled with nonsensical, theatrical jargon, saying things like, “You need to be the box that you think outside of!” He presented it with absolute conviction. The entire executive team took diligent notes, never once questioning the absurdity of his statements. When he revealed the lecture was a satire, a vice president admitted, “But you sound just like the others.” This reveals a dangerous truth: many leaders have become so desensitized to empty innovation-speak that they can no longer distinguish it from parody.

Narrator: Many people assume that bad ideas are killed in dramatic boardroom showdowns. The reality, Rehn argues, is far more subtle and insidious. Most ideas don't die with a bang, but with a whimper. They are smothered by silence, indifference, and a thousand tiny signs of neglect. This is connected to the "broken windows theory," which suggests that small signs of disorder, like a single broken window, can signal that no one cares, leading to a wider breakdown of social order. In a company, a broken window could be a suggestion box that is never emptied or an idea that receives no follow-up. These small slights create a culture where people learn that it’s not worth the effort to contribute.

Rehn shares the story of a chemical company that, facing pressure to innovate, launched a grand internal ideas competition. Over 700 ideas were submitted. One passionate chemical engineer submitted five detailed proposals. Weeks later, he received five identical, impersonal rejection emails with no feedback. The company then held a lavish finale for the six shortlisted ideas. However, the jury, composed of the executive team, was disengaged. They checked their phones, and one even fell asleep. The competition, designed to inspire, ended up disenchanting employees by showing them that, despite the fancy stage, the company didn't truly care about their ideas.

Narrator: An organization cannot simply demand innovation. It must cultivate the conditions for it, much like a farmer tends to the soil. The most crucial ingredient for this fertile ground is psychological safety, which is the shared belief that it is safe to take interpersonal risks, such as voicing a strange idea or admitting a mistake, without fear of punishment or humiliation. Research from Google’s Project Aristotle found that psychological safety was the single most important factor in high-performing teams.

Building this safety requires more than just stating it as a value. It requires active engagement, and sometimes, unconventional actions. Rehn tells of a German CEO who, after realizing his company’s innovation efforts were shallow, took a radical step. He banned the word "innovation" from all internal communications. This forced employees to stop relying on buzzwords and instead describe new projects in concrete, practical terms. The result was a dramatic shift. People who previously felt excluded from the high-level "innovation" discourse now felt empowered to participate, leading to more grounded and inclusive discussions about the company's future. This illustrates that fostering a deep culture sometimes requires breaking the old patterns of communication.

Narrator: In an era where data analytics and AI are becoming cheap and accessible, a company’s true competitive advantage no longer lies in its ability to process information. It lies in its ability to imagine what the data cannot show. Rehn calls this the "imagination premium." Yet, many organizations actively suppress imagination, viewing it as childish or unserious, and instead cling to the safety of data-driven "best practices."

The stories of Nokia and Blockbuster serve as cautionary tales. Both companies had immense amounts of data about their customers and markets. Nokia’s engineers knew how people used their phones, and Blockbuster knew exactly what movies people rented. But as Rehn puts it, "They had the data, and they couldn’t see beyond it." They failed to imagine a future of smartphones and streaming, and their reliance on historical data blinded them to the disruption ahead. True innovation requires moving beyond logic and routine into the realm of creativity and play. Play, defined as an exploratory activity that follows its own internal logic, is a powerful way to break free from old assumptions and imagine new possibilities.

Narrator: The world of innovation is notoriously homogenous. It is often dominated by what Rehn calls "male, pale, and stale" perspectives, with a significant lack of diversity. This is not just a social issue; it is a business crisis. Organizational monocultures, where everyone thinks and acts alike, are breeding grounds for innovation fatigue. They lack the cognitive diversity—the differences in perspective and information processing styles—that is essential for creativity.

Research from McKinsey confirms this, showing that companies with greater gender and ethnic diversity are significantly more profitable than their less diverse peers. This is because diversity introduces new ideas, challenges assumptions, and prevents groupthink. While psychological safety is important, a degree of "respectful disharmony" is also needed. Productive conflict and debate, when handled respectfully, are what push ideas forward and make them stronger. Organizations must actively work to break down their monocultures and build teams that reflect a wide range of backgrounds, experiences, and ways of thinking to unlock their full innovative potential.

Narrator: The modern innovation narrative is obsessed with speed. Slogans like "move fast and break things" have created a culture of relentless urgency. While speed can inject energy, it can also lead to burnout and shallow thinking. Rehn argues that innovation doesn't have a single tempo; it has many different rhythms. Some projects require fast, agile sprints, while others need long, patient development.

The story of the laser printer is a perfect example. In the 1970s, a Xerox engineer named Gary Starkweather had the idea, but he was met with resistance at every turn. Even at the legendary Xerox PARC, his project was underfunded and dismissed by management. It took years of quiet perseverance for the idea to survive and eventually become a world-changing technology. This kind of breakthrough requires patience from leadership. Furthermore, organizations must design for "slack"—time that is not scheduled with busywork, allowing the unconscious mind to operate. Ideas often emerge in these in-between moments. A culture that views slack as waste is a culture that is wasting its most valuable cognitive surplus.

Narrator: The central message of Innovation for the Fatigued is a call to abandon what Rehn terms "innovation pornography"—the cleaned-up, unrealistic, and idealized stories of success that dominate the industry. This shallow narrative creates false expectations and leads to disappointment when the messy, complex, and failure-ridden reality of innovation sets in. The solution is not another framework or a new buzzword. It is a fundamental shift towards an innovation culture built on humility, care, and purpose.

The book challenges leaders to stop performing innovation and start nurturing it. This means focusing on the small, daily interactions that create psychological safety, showing genuine respect for every idea, embracing the creative power of diversity, and allowing for both the urgency of a sprint and the patience of a marathon. The most challenging idea is that the antidote to innovation fatigue isn't more innovation; it's more humanity. The question it leaves us with is this: What is one small "broken window" in your own culture, and what can you do today to begin to repair it?