Optimization vs innovation: the battle inside every company
Companies say they want innovation, then build organizations that punish it. In this clip from You’re Not the Audience, Parliament Creative Director Calvin Ross Carl explains why sales, growth, and procurement teams aren’t the villains, and why their reliance on measurable data means they can only measure the past. He shares why clients eventually have to trust the leap, and looks at brands that made risk their thing, including Apple, Microsoft Store, Liquid Death, Supreme, and Patagonia. It’s from the You’re Not the Audience episode on best practices and innovation, How Best Practices Kill Innovation.
Watch the full episode
Outline
Summary
Calvin Ross Carl describes the core tension in most organizations: companies know they need something new to stay relevant, but as they grow, anything outside the org chart starts to feel scary and unreliable. The departments that seem to quell innovation, like sales, growth, and procurement, aren’t killing creativity. They’re doing their jobs, and they rely on measurable data to reduce risk and cost.
The problem is that measurable data only measures the past. There’s no way to measure whether an innovative idea will succeed while it’s happening, which is why Calvin tells clients that at some point they have to trust the work and make the leap.
He then points to brands known for doing something weird or risky. Apple created new product categories and a new standard for retail, which made it hard for Microsoft’s stores, where Parliament was the agency of record, to own the idea. Liquid Death, Supreme, and Patagonia each changed how people think about their categories.
Highlights
Companies want innovation but often build organizations that punish it.
Optimization departments are essential, and they pay everyone’s salaries.
Measurement is always behind innovation.
Apple owned the idea of a new retail experience because it got there first.
Liquid Death made water gnarly, Supreme reinvented drops, and Patagonia set out to save the world.
Key insights
Optimization isn’t the enemy
Sales and procurement teams reduce risk and project the future. They just aren’t built to create originality, so they shouldn’t be asked to.
Innovation can only be measured later
Because data looks backward, any truly new idea will look unproven at the moment of decision. That risk is inherent, not a flaw in the idea.
Trust has to bridge the gap
When the strategy is built on a platform everyone believes in, the final step is a leap of confidence rather than another round of proof.
Being first matters
Apple’s retail stores became the gold standard, so anything that followed was measured against an idea Apple already owned.
Detailed analysis
The clip reframes the innovation problem as a mismatch of tools rather than a clash of personalities. Optimization teams answer the question of how to sell an idea to your boss with numbers, but numbers can’t exist for something that hasn’t happened yet. Asking efficiency departments to produce originality sets everyone up to fail.
The brand examples show what the other side of the leap looks like. Liquid Death’s stupid-but-genius idea, Supreme’s drop model, and Patagonia’s mission were all risks no dataset would have recommended, and each one reshaped its category.
Conclusion
Optimization and innovation both belong in a healthy company, but they answer different questions. Calvin’s point is that innovation will always outrun measurement, so leaders have to be willing to make the leap.
Transcript
So the tension here is that companies want innovation. They know they need to do something new to stay relevant, but they usually build organizations that punish it. At some point, some level, your org gets so big you start having elaborate org charts, and anything that starts falling outside of that gets scary, gets unreliable. It becomes unknown. So that’s where one of those tensions exists.
But I think the other important thing to know is that it’s not those departments. When I’m thinking of the parts of organizations that exist and quell or punish innovation, you’ve got your sales departments, your growth departments, your procurement, all of those different parts of an org. But that doesn’t kill creativity. Those things are just doing their job. The difference is just that all that stuff relies on measurable data. Here’s back to how do you sell it to your boss? Those ones are easy, because there’s all measurable data. On most of those, this line goes down, that money line goes up, or something of that sort. So the optimization side of the business helps them reduce risk and costs, and it just helps them project into the future, which is a big one, because usually you’re assessing the past and you can establish where it might keep going. And it’s super good that those departments exist, all those optimization departments. We need them, and we literally can’t do our jobs without them. I mean, they’re the ones that actually pay our salaries. So thanks, optimization departments.
But the problem with measurable data is that it can only measure the past. So it can only measure the old best practices, and there’s inherently no way to measure if an innovative idea is going to be successful. It is inherently a risky process. And that is the challenge: measurement is always behind innovation. There’s truly no way to get ahead of it. So that’s why you don’t ask the efficiency departments to create originality or to create new ideas or create new products, because that’s not in their wheelhouse. The value of innovation just can’t be measured when it’s happening. It can only be measured later.
That’s going back to story time at the beginning. That’s why I think about that with clients, because the biggest thing you can do at that point is just reiterate: you have to trust us. It’s risky. It’s a big change. It’s risky. We’ve done our work. We all have the confidence that this is all built on a platform that we understand and we all believe in. So now we have to make the leap, and making that leap is pretty scary.
And we all know brands that have made that their thing. They’re really good at doing something weird or risky. You’ve got Apple, for example. Great at innovation, great at the optimization side, but they did weird or risky stuff. They created completely new product categories: the iPhone, the iPod. And the other innovation they did that I think a lot of people don’t talk about is a completely new style of retail experience. They have become the gold standard now for how a retail experience should look. Then you have companies like Microsoft, and Microsoft did their Microsoft stores, which Parliament was the agency of record for, for the rollout of their stores once upon a time, back in the old days. The problem was that Apple had done it. So anything that comes after it, Apple still owned that idea.
And then we know other folks. I’ve got this up right now, so I’ll just show it, because we all know Liquid Death. Liquid Death had a stupid idea that was genius: to make water cool and gnarly and violent and heavy metal, rather than making it about being pure and clean like every other brand was before. Some other brands that I think have done important things and changed the way we think a lot: a brand like Supreme. I’m not into Supreme. I’m not into that world of fashion, but the way they have completely changed how fashion is marketed and distributed, with drops and things like that—I think Supreme was a really big one. And then we all know Patagonia is another great example of taking big risks. Their job is saving the world, you know? So when you pitch the idea of, “We’re a clothing company, but our goal is to save the world,” that’s kind of a big risk.