Innovation for the Fatigued

Have you ever rolled your eyes at another company “innovation workshop” or groaned when someone told you to “think outside the box”? Alf Rehn would say you’re suffering from a very modern epidemic—innovation fatigue. In his thought-provoking book, Innovation for the Fatigued: How to Build a Culture of Deep Creativity, Rehn argues that our organizations—and society at large—are drowning in shallow innovation talk. We celebrate flashy apps and trendy jargon while forgetting what real innovation is supposed to do: change lives, solve problems, and build meaning.

Rehn contends that today’s innovation culture has lost its soul. We’ve built an entire “innovation industry” of consultants, buzzwords, and Post-it®-note workshops that substitute style for substance. Instead of nurturing imagination, curiosity, diversity, or courage, many companies are simply repeating the same rituals—and exhausting their people in the process. His solution? To move from shallow innovation to what he calls deep innovation—a holistic, cultural transformation rooted in care, respect, responsibility, and reflection.

The Innovation Crisis

Rehn opens the book with two scenes from his career as an innovation consultant. In 2006, he was welcomed with bright eyes and excitement. By 2018, he met weary sighs and muttered complaints of “not this again.” Innovation—once a thrilling idea about creativity and progress—had become corporate wallpaper. With hundreds of new innovation books published each month and endlessly recycled examples (Apple! Google! Tesla!), the concept lost meaning. Instead of breakthroughs, we got “innovative” Pop-Tart flavors and Bluetooth toasters. As Rehn jokes, you can now buy an “innovation certification” as easily as a latte.

His diagnosis is sharp: innovation has been commodified, commercialized, and corrupted. It’s no longer about transformation but about performing the appearance of transformation. This endless parade of shallow innovation talk creates fatigue and cynicism—especially among employees who’ve sat through too many contrived brainstorms and seen too few real changes.

Shallow vs. Deep Innovation

To escape the fatigue trap, Rehn introduces his central distinction: shallow versus deep innovation. Shallow innovation focuses on surface-level novelty, trends, and PR opportunities. It loves buzzwords, replication, and safe bets that look exciting but change little. Deep innovation, by contrast, seeks meaning, inclusivity, and impact. It’s not about another app or business model tweak—it’s about solving real problems in ways that improve lives. Using his “four innovation cultures model,” Rehn categorizes corporate cultures as:

• Shallow: Me-too novelty, driven by fad and image rather than substance.
• Social: Popular causes pursued in fashionable but limited ways.
• Show-off: Big, unique gestures for attention rather than impact.
• Deep: Meaningful, ambitious, and transformative innovation addressing real human needs.

While shallow and show-off approaches dominate headlines, deep innovation—improving education in poor communities, cleaning oceans, designing safer medical devices—quietly changes the world. Rehn’s message: stop chasing trends and start nurturing purpose.

Unleashing the Cognitive Surplus

A hopeful thread runs through Rehn’s critique: every organization is overflowing with ideas. He calls this the cognitive surplus—the untapped creativity, imagination, and insight that already exist among employees. The tragedy is not a lack of ideas but a lack of care and courage to develop them. In many companies, ideas die not from rejection but from neglect—from the yawns, silences, and passive indifference of managers. Rehn vividly describes “the yawn as the most powerful killer of ideas.” Fighting innovation fatigue means cultivating cultures where ideas feel valued and safe to express.

That, Rehn says, starts with psychological safety, respect, reciprocity, responsibility, and reflection—the four Rs. If people fear ridicule, disrespect, or a culture of fake enthusiasm, the flow of creativity dries up.

From Diversity to Meaning and Courage

Rehn devotes significant attention to diversity, arguing that innovation has a privilege problem. Silicon Valley’s “brotopia” produces endless apps for food delivery and dating but few meaningful solutions for marginalized groups. Organizations dominated by “male, pale, and stale” monocultures miss out on the incredible creative potential that comes from varied backgrounds and cognitive styles. He highlights the work of cultural brokers—people who bridge differences in language, discipline, or identity—and calls them vital for deep creativity.

To make innovation meaningful, Rehn insists companies need more than process; they need purpose and courage. Purpose aligns innovation with real impact, while courage allows people to challenge norms, take risks, and even say “no” to meaningless innovation theater. He encourages “the courage to allow,” “the courage to say no,” and “the courage to govern”—principles for leaders who want to build resilient, authentic innovation cultures rather than performative ones.

Rethinking Innovation Time

Deep innovation also requires rethinking time. Rehn argues that innovation moves to many rhythms—quick bursts (“agile spurts”), long patient slogs, quiet pauses, and recovery periods. Companies obsessed with speed end up burning out; those with patience can change the world. He tells the story of Xerox’s decades-long path to the laser printer and NASA’s enduring commitment to exploration as examples of “innovation in human time.”

Ultimately, Innovation for the Fatigued calls for a moral and emotional reboot of innovation: one grounded in compassion, inclusion, respect, curiosity, and meaning. Rehn wants to bring humanity back into creativity—to restore innovation’s deeper purpose after years of hype. As he quips, “We don’t need one more model. We need compassion.”

“Innovation used to mean changing the world. Today, it often means changing the color of an app icon. To revive our creative soul, we must go deep.”

Rehn’s strongest argument is that most organizations practice shallow innovation: activity without depth. They chase fast results, hype, and corporate theater. He contrasts this with deep innovation—change that emerges from reflection, empathy, courage, and a willingness to tackle “wicked problems.”

Recognizing the Shallows

You’ve seen shallow innovation before: internal idea contests that go nowhere, “disruption” workshops run by consultants, or teams proudly launching redundant apps. For Rehn, this is a form of innovation theater—performance without purpose. He tells of a chemical company that hosted a grand idea competition. An engineer spent nights submitting five detailed ideas and received five identical “thank you” emails with no feedback. Demoralized, he vowed never to share an idea again. Innovation died, not with rejection, but with silence.

The Elements of Deep Innovation

Deep innovation demands more than excitement. It needs structures that respect ideas and people. Rehn identifies four cultural pillars—the Four Rs—that define organizations capable of sustained creativity:

• Respect: Ideas thrive only where people feel heard. Innovation requires civility and psychological safety, not arrogance or fear.
• Reciprocity: Leaders must give as much as they ask. Demanding innovation without providing resources, time, or feedback kills motivation.
• Responsibility: Everyone—especially leaders—must take ownership of their role in building innovation culture.
• Reflection: Deep innovation requires ongoing self-questioning: Are we chasing trends or solving real problems? What assumptions blind us?

Together, these transform creativity from a buzzword into a shared practice. Cultures built on the Four Rs treat innovation like farming rather than hunting—you nurture soil, tend seedlings, and protect small ideas until they can grow.

The Role of Leadership and Vulnerability

Leadership is critical. Deep cultures form when leaders model vulnerability, humility, and mindfulness rather than endless bravado. Rehn draws inspiration from Brené Brown’s research on vulnerability, showing how leaders who admit uncertainty (“I don’t have all the answers”) create trust. He recounts Konecranes CEO Pekka Lundmark’s humility during innovation reforms—acknowledging his limitations and listening to engineers. This vulnerability empowered others to speak honestly.

By contrast, arrogant managers breed innovation fatigue. Recall the COO known as “the Sphinx”: stoic, unsmiling, giving no feedback. He believed silence showed neutrality; in truth, it suffocated creativity. Rehn’s takeaway: indifference is deadlier than criticism.

Deep Innovation as Moral Practice

Ultimately, deep innovation is moral work. It’s not just profit-seeking but a commitment to inclusion, integrity, and care. Rehn’s metaphor of “thinking like a farmer” captures this beautifully—you cultivate ideas through patience, stewardship, and compassion, not slogans and theatrics. Deep innovation isn’t something you implement; it’s something you grow. As he concludes, “We don’t need management as much as we need compassion.”

Rehn’s fifth chapter exposes a quiet truth: innovation has a diversity problem. From Edison to Elon Musk, innovation’s public image is overwhelmingly male, white, and Western. This monoculture not only perpetuates privilege—it impoverishes creativity. Real innovation, he argues, thrives on difference.

Why Homogeneity Hurts

When everyone in the room looks and thinks alike, blind spots multiply. Silicon Valley’s “brotopia,” as journalist Emily Chang calls it, produces countless products for affluent young men—delivery apps, dating platforms, and gaming peripherals—while neglecting challenges like elder care or accessibility. This isn’t malice, Rehn notes; it’s tunnel vision. Privilege shapes what innovators see as problems worth solving.

He offers striking examples of forgotten innovators: Gertrude Belle Elion, who developed breakthrough drugs without a PhD, remains unknown, while Steve Jobs is deified. Elion’s story symbolizes countless unseen innovators denied recognition due to bias.

Privilege and Access

Innovation requires resources—time, networks, safety nets. As Rehn points out, Steve Jobs could risk dropping out of Reed College because his adoptive parents used their savings for his schooling. Many brilliant minds never get that chance. Privilege fuels both individual and organizational innovation: startups with access to rich investors and elite networks dominate venture funding. Meanwhile, diverse entrepreneurs struggle for support (echoing Ross Baird’s arguments in The Innovation Blind Spot).

The Business Case for Difference

Beyond fairness, diversity delivers results. Rehn cites a McKinsey report: gender-diverse firms outperform competitors by 21%, ethnically diverse ones by 33%. This “diversity dividend” isn’t tokenistic—more perspectives mean more ideas, broader markets, and higher profits. Yet many companies miss this because they treat diversity as HR compliance rather than creative necessity.

Cognitive and Cultural Diversity

Diversity is multifaceted: gender, ethnicity, education, age, cognitive style. Studies by Alison Reynolds and David Lewis show teams thrive when they combine psychological safety (where everyone can speak) with cognitive diversity (different ways of thinking). Safe but homogenous teams stagnate; diverse but unsafe teams implode. The sweet spot—“respectful disharmony”—balances trust with creative friction.

The Role of Cultural Brokers

One of Rehn’s most original contributions is his concept of the cultural broker. Borrowed from scholar Sujin Jang, these are people who bridge worlds—engineers fluent in “sales-speak,” managers who can translate between generations, global teams who straddle cultures. When these connectors are present, innovation flows. Without them, organizations fragment into silos. Rehn’s “nerd-whisperer” story—a young programmer who left a company, unknowingly crippling communication—illustrates how unseen brokers sustain creativity.

In the end, embracing diversity isn’t political correctness—it’s practical wisdom. The more varied your team’s perspectives, the deeper your well of imagination. Diversity turns innovation from echo chamber to symphony.

Rehn laments that “innovation” has become bullshit—a word stripped of meaning and dripping with self-promotion. Citing philosopher Harry Frankfurt’s On Bullshit, he argues that much corporate innovation talk isn’t lying; it’s indifferent to truth. Consultants peddle clichés (“disrupt everything!”) without coherence. To restore authenticity, companies must bring back meaning and purpose.

From Buzzwords to Belief

Rehn recounts CEOs waxing poetic about “excellence” as their company’s purpose—an empty platitude that inspires no one. In contrast, he praises Bempu, an Indian social enterprise that created a temperature-monitoring baby bracelet to combat infant hypothermia. Its purpose—“simply saving lives”—motivates employees and investors alike. Purpose makes innovation human again.

Innovation Ambition

Deep innovation balances ambition with stress. Drawing on research by Pedersen and Ritter, Rehn explains that too little challenge breeds boredom; too much causes burnout. The sweet spot—just enough stress—keeps teams engaged. Leaders must define clear, meaningful ambitions while avoiding vague, overwhelming exhortations like “be radical.” He shares a cautionary tale of a CEO demanding “Facebook-level innovations” from plumbing engineers—setting his team up for guaranteed defeat.

Daring and Caring

Courage is central to Rehn’s philosophy. He describes three forms leaders need: the courage to allow (giving people freedom to experiment), the courage to say no (resisting meaningless initiatives), and the courage to govern (embedding risk-taking in structures and boards). His story of a CEO publicly rewarding an employee who failed boldly—calling him “the man with guts and heart”—embodies this ethos. Such moments create trust and stimulate risk-taking.

Ultimately, Rehn reframes courage not as bravado but as compassion in action. “We don’t need heroes,” he writes, “we need caregivers for ideas.” Purpose provides direction; courage provides energy; compassion provides endurance. Together, they make innovation resilient.

Innovation isn’t a sprint—it’s a symphony of rhythms. In Chapter 7, Rehn explores how time itself shapes creative cultures. Many companies worship speed (“move fast and break things!”), but real innovation requires tempo variety—fast experiments, slow developments, strategic pauses, and reflective recovery.

Agile Spurts and Power Pauses

Short, intense cycles—“agile spurts”—energize teams by creating quick wins and learning feedback loops. Yet endless sprints exhaust people. That’s why Rehn emphasizes power pauses: deliberate breaks from innovation to restore focus. He tells of a CEO who temporarily banned innovation projects, allowing exhausted teams to breathe. When the ban lifted, employee engagement and idea quality soared. Sometimes, less innovation creates space for better innovation.

The Long Slog

Some innovations simply take time. Chester Carlson’s xerography took nearly 20 years from concept to commercialization. The internet evolved over decades of persistence. Rehn calls this the patience premium: world-changing ideas require commitment beyond quarterly results. “What would you do,” he asks, “if someone asked for a million dollars for an idea that might pay off 40 years from now?” Deep innovators learn radical patience.

Designing for Slack

Creativity often happens in the “in-between” moments—walks, showers, or idle musings. Rehn urges leaders to design for slack: fewer meetings, off-email hours, even nap spaces. Citing Miles Davis’s advice—“don’t play what’s there; play what’s not there”—he treats pauses as the jazz of innovation. Genius often hides in silence.

By embracing flexible tempos, leaders move from managing output to orchestrating energy. Innovation cultures, like music, need crescendos and rests, fast riffs and long notes. As Rehn notes, “Sometimes the fastest way to innovate is to stop innovating for a while.”

At the heart of deep innovation lies imagination—a faculty many corporations quietly distrust. Rehn calls imagination the “deepest layer” of creative thinking, richer than mere logic or experimentation. Organizations mired in data and best practices, like Nokia before its fall, lose sight of imaginative vision. They analyze instead of dream.

The Layers of Thought

Rehn visualizes cognition as a mine, not a mountain. Surface layers—routine and logic—are easy to reach. Deeper down lie experimentation, creativity, and finally imagination: the hardest rock to break but richest in value. You reach it by digging through assumptions, logic, and fear. For individuals and companies, that means leaving comfort zones and accepting uncertainty.

Play as Serious Work

Play, Rehn insists, is adult work in disguise. It trains flexibility, empathy, and risk-taking. His playful experiments—like asking consultants to imagine their services were illegal—produced breakthrough ideas that traditional brainstorming never could. Play reframes constraints as possibilities. Alphabet’s wild “X Labs” projects or Burger King’s subversive campaigns embody this spirit.

Curiosity as a Corporate Asset

Curiosity fuels imagination. Yet Francesca Gino’s research shows 70% of employees feel discouraged from asking questions. Rehn suggests leaders actively engineer curiosity through diverse inputs, job rotation, and incentives for exploration. Roche, for instance, nurtures curiosity by maintaining two competing research centers that aren’t allowed to share data, forcing each to seek fresh perspectives externally.

When organizations trade curiosity for efficiency, creativity suffocates. Rehn’s remedy is simple: reclaim play and wonder. “Imagination,” he writes, “only looks childish. Few things could be more serious.”

In his final chapter, Rehn coins a memorable phrase: innovation pornography. Just as pornography presents a sanitized fantasy of sex, innovation porn glorifies creativity as smooth, heroic, and effortless. The messy realities—false starts, arguments, failures—vanish. This illusion, he warns, sets leaders up for disappointment and employees up for burnout.

The Unreal Fantasy

In glossy magazines, innovation stories follow a formula: a genius has an idea, skeptics doubt him, success follows swiftly. In reality, innovation is grueling—more “long slog” than Hollywood montage. Chester Carlson’s decades of struggle or NASA’s incremental advances rarely fit the TED Talk narrative. Believing the fantasy blinds leaders to the patience and tolerance real change demands.

The Pygmalion and Golem Effects

Drawing from education research, Rehn applies the Pygmalion effect—high expectations breed high performance—and its opposite, the Golem effect—low expectations reinforce failure—to innovation leadership. Managers mesmerized by idealized innovation stories expect constant breakthroughs and condemn normal struggles. The result is disillusionment and fatigue. Managers who trust their teams’ potential instead inspire growth and courage.

After “Innovation”

Rehn ends by calling for a return to humility—what he calls “thinking like a farmer.” Innovation isn’t conquest but cultivation. Success depends on small acts of care: listening, supporting, waiting, and respecting difference. He praises the shift by Y Combinator toward funding carbon removal and Ann Mei Chang’s Lean Impact—signs that even Silicon Valley is learning to care again.

“Innovation,” Rehn reminds us, “is too important to be left to hype.” His book is a manifesto for restoring respect, empathy, and meaning to creativity. Less showmanship, more stewardship. Less noise, more nurture.