Innovation and Growth: They Don’t Have to be Exclusive
A Practical Strategy for Scaling Collaboration and Sustainable Innovation
By Simon Doble
Innovation thrives in chaos. Growth demands order. The challenge for modern organisations is learning to do both — to scale without losing the creativity that made them worth scaling in the first place. This article explores how purpose, contribution, and the right structures can turn that tension into momentum.
You can’t run a marathon in hiking boots. And yet, that’s what many companies attempt when they try to scale innovation.
The belief that growth and creativity can’t coexist is deeply entrenched. Large organisations are seen as sluggish, procedural, obsessed with order. Meanwhile, small teams are held up as the Davids of disruption: nimble, imaginative, quick to pivot.
But in today’s world, solving the biggest problems—climate, energy, inequality—requires the muscle of scale and the spark of innovation. You can’t have one without the other.
The question isn’t whether innovation can scale. It’s how to build systems and cultures that let it grow without choking it.
No matter how good of a player you are, if you’re Rooney, Messi, Marta, or Pele, you can’t win the Champions League by yourself. You need to be part of a team.
Purpose is not a slogan—it’s your scaffolding
In traditional business thinking, people are bound together by one of four forces: habit, profit, emotion, or belief. Of these, belief—or shared purpose—is the most resilient and flexible. It outlasts charismatic leaders. It works better than financial incentives. And it invites people to care about more than just their role.
But purpose isn’t magic. It only becomes powerful when it is co-owned, not handed down. That means defining purpose in practical, collaborative terms. What are we here to achieve—not just for our shareholders, but for our customers, our communities, and the world?
When everyone understands how their work advances that goal, collaboration becomes instinctive. You’re not just following instructions. You’re contributing to something shared.
Contribution over brilliance
Talented people are everywhere. But talent alone doesn’t build systems. The Champions League isn’t won by solo players. It takes a team that knows how to pass, support, and adapt.
In large teams, innovation depends not just on good ideas, but on what people do with them—how they contribute, combine, and improve them. That means building a culture where contribution matters more than individual performance. Where showing off earns less credit than showing up for the team.
When contribution is what’s valued, people trust each other. They go further. And they move faster together.
Structure that adapts with you
Too much structure kills creativity. Too little makes coordination impossible. The best organisations find a middle ground.
Traditional hierarchies scale well, but they are slow to innovate. Loose networks innovate well, but they struggle to scale. Somewhere between the two is a space for resilient collaboration.
This could look like multi-management teams, or decentralised structures where people help shape the very systems they work within. The key is shared ownership. Not just of outcomes, but of the processes that get you there.
Changing these structures takes time. It requires transparency, humility, and hard conversations. But done well, it strengthens the connective tissue that makes innovation sustainable.
Innovation at scale is a team sport
If you want your organisation to grow and stay bold, start with how you work together. Shared purpose. Valued contributions. Adaptive structures.
These same principles apply externally, too. If your mission touches global challenges, you won’t get far going it alone. At Barefoot Citizens, we build collaborative ecosystems—not empires—so that others can join the work and scale the impact.
The best solutions are like spider webs: every new thread makes the whole stronger. All it takes is a shared reason to build, a commitment to working as one, and the humility to know you can’t do it all yourself.
That's how innovation scales—and stays alive.
- Simon