Put Down the Innovation Book — Pick Up Your Founder’s Courage
by Yasushi Kusume
At key turning points in life, many of us feel a deep urge to challenge ourselves anew — to recapture a spark of youthful excitement. I’m no exception. After many years away from the sport, I’ve recently started skiing again, a passion from my student days. But I very quickly learned that you can’t just pick up where you left off and leap back into high-level training. First, you need to regain and rebuild basic skills — to get your body, and mind, reacquainted with the challenges the sport will offer you.
It’s exactly the same for companies trying to innovate.
Big Company Syndrome
Too often, big companies get lost in dazzling visions of the future. The result? Grand schemes that then stall or quietly fade away. Why? Because such initiatives rarely represent a real first step.Instead of making concrete plans for change, such companies so often default to protecting the status quo, avoiding risk, and clinging to the comforting illusion that ‘our current business will keep growing forever’. Such defensive thinking is what defines Big Company Syndrome — a slow drift toward irrelevance.
Let’s try!
Because what’s missing is the courage that powered the company’s birth — the founder’s spirit. The boldness to look ahead and say, let’s try! That spirit created unique value, disruptive models, and competitive advantage. But then, as time passes, as the founders move on and the companies mature, that spark often fades — to be replaced by efficiency drives and risk aversion. All to protect what’s already there.
I say it’s time to bring that courage back. But I ‘m not about to offer yet another framework promising breakthrough business models or instant market dominance. What I want to describe here is a way to rediscover and reignite your founder’s spirit — through action.
Reignite the spirit
First of all, and most importantly, don’t try to start big. To achieve big goals, you need to first define clear targets and then take small, steady steps to achieve them.
With that in mind, I’d like to offer the following three steps.
Reassess your strengths
Forget the future for a moment. Focus on what your company already does exceptionally well — your products, technology, production, responsiveness, brand power. Get external perspectives if needed. Before you can leap forward, you need to know exactly who you are and where you’re starting from.
Connect to emerging social shifts
Now look beyond your walls. How do your strengths align with the directions society is heading in? Do they connect with changing work styles? With sustainability trends? With shifts in health and diet? If they do, fine. If not, find a way to make them connect. Even the most ordinary product can find new relevance if you identify the right connection point.
Map your path to tomorrow
When you’ve determined what you’re good at and where you stand, and where you want to go, map the path that will take you there. Determine the steps you can take now. Decide what will take longer. Then share this roadmap throughout the company to create focus, energy, and unity among all the employees.
Then be honest with yourselves.
Have you really done this?
I say ‘ be honest with yourselves’ because, when faced with these steps some will say, ‘But we’ve done all that already!’ Don’t be so sure. In my experience, the more products a company has, the easier it is to focus only on those products — and to lose sight of the bigger, more important picture: the connections between the company’s products, strategy, and purpose.
The goal here isn’t just a generic business roadmap, or a list of company strengths. The purpose of the process, of the three steps, is to awaken your organization’s hunger for challenge — to take those vital first moves that will make real innovation possible.
Stop Overthinking. Start Moving.
So, close that innovation playbook for now. Put all those thoughtful theories and complex models to one side. Stop looking for the perfect framework for success. Doing all that is like trying to become an Olympic skier without first getting being fit or prepared. None of them will get you where you want to go — not yet.
Instead, if you’re serious about bringing back the spirit that built your company in the first place back, ask yourself what kind of future your company’s current strengths can create.
Facing that question — and acting on it — is where true change begins.
This article was first published on Medium in 2025.