Many a times innovation takes a back seat as company grows, focus increases on the bread and butter and processes come in.

How to make sure your company keeps innovating as it scales? A short :

1. Normalise failures and condemn mediocrity.

Create an environment where team members are empowered to take decisions and are not walking on eggshells. It's ok to fail if you are learning from failures. But it's not ok to launch sub par stuff in the name of playing safe.

2. In line with learning from failures, do NOT ship any feature/experiment without a detailed hypothesis.

Take hypothesis writing to next level. Predict and note EVERYTHING before launch - all journeys, each button click. You will end up learning a lot more than you think.

3. Create a safe space for your innovators to share the most ridiculous sounding ideas.

For example, safe space in remote world could be meetings in smaller groups where open ended discussions on a list of curated topics can happen.

4. "We do not have bandwidth" is the biggest innovation killer. Why bother thinking when none of this will get shipped?

Do not let bandwidth be an excuse for bad innovation. You need to be innovative in how you plan the resources. Set up your innovators for success.

Break down your roadmap into deterministic and indeterministic initiatives. Hedge your bets. >80% of your deterministic bets should work. These initiatives should be well thought and built. While hitting 40% in indeterministic is good enough. More on this point separately.

5. Lastly and most importantly, hire well. Hire driven folks who are hungry to learn and are not there to just do a job.

I believe that creativity as a skill can be acquired but curiosity can't. Would rather hire a curious hard working candidate over a by-the-book know-it-all.