People treat innovation as knowledge when it’s actually a skill.

Despite running multiple design thinking workshops many businesses still struggle with innovation. It’s not due to a lack of effort but because of ineffective implementation. It's not your fault, nor your team’s fault; it’s simply unrealistic to expect people to magically become innovators after attending a couple of workshops.

Methodologies such as Design Thinking, Lean Startup and Design Sprints are pretty quick and easy to learn. Anybody can become an “expert” in the process. But applying them and achieving real results in a complex and uncertain real world requires much more than just knowing that ideation comes after defining.

It’s like driving a car. The theory of driving a car is pretty easy to learn, especially an automatic. Many 7-year-olds would be able to drive an automatic car in a controlled environment (if they could reach the pedals). But they are far from having the skill required to be able to drive safely on the road. That takes a different level of maturity, observation, awareness and thinking skills (and I'd argue many drivers out there are missing some of these skills, but that's a different story).

Innovation is exactly the same. Your ability to innovate is not reliant on your knowledge of Design Thinking; your ability to empathise, spot insights, and think both critically and creatively are far more important. There are great innovators out there who've never heard of Design Thinking, but they have the right skills required for innovation.

Knowing Design Thinking or any other innovation framework without having the underlying skills required to apply it is like building a house on weak foundations. It may look good on the surface but it won't hold up for very long and you'll soon realise that you can't really build a house (or innovate). Weak foundations will only hold up the facade for so long.