Large companies like Rippling and TripActions maintain innovation velocity by creating "carved out" teams for new, "zero to one" initiatives. This organizational strategy provides singular focus, empowering a small group to execute with the intensity and speed of an early-stage startup without corporate distractions.

If a company creates a siloed "innovation team," it's a sign the main product organization is stuck in "business as usual" maintenance. Innovation should be a mindset embedded across all teams, not an isolated function delegated to a select few.

Companies fail at collaboration due to behavioral issues, not a shortage of good ideas. When teams operate in silos, believing "I know better," and are not open to challenging themselves or embracing "crazy ideas," progress stalls. Breaking down these habitual, protective behaviors is essential for creating a fluid and truly innovative environment.

While traditionally creating cultural friction, separate innovation teams are now more viable thanks to AI. The ability to go from idea to prototype extremely fast and leanly allows a small team to explore the "next frontier" without derailing the core product org, provided clear handoff rules exist.

To innovate quickly without being bogged down by technical debt, portfolio companies should ring-fence new AI development. By outsourcing it and treating it as a separate "skunk works" project, the core tech team can focus on existing systems while the new initiative succeeds or fails on its own merits.

As companies scale, the "delivery" mindset (efficiency, spreadsheets) naturally pushes out the "discovery" mindset (creativity, poetry). A CEO's crucial role is to act as "discoverer-in-chief," protecting the innovation function from being suffocated by operational demands, which prevents the company from becoming obsolete.

Afeyan advises against making breakthrough innovation everyone's responsibility, as it's unsustainable and disruptive to daily jobs. Instead, companies should create a separate group with different motivations, composition, and rewards, focused solely on discontinuous leaps.

Siphoning off cutting-edge work to a separate 'labs' group demotivates core teams and disconnects innovation from those who own the customer. Instead, foster 'innovating teams' by making innovation the responsibility of the core product teams themselves.

Forcing innovations to "scale" via top-down mandates often fails by robbing local teams of ownership. A better approach is to let good ideas "spread." If a solution is truly valuable, other teams will naturally adopt it. This pull-based model ensures change sticks and evolves.