Sticky notes don't make you innovative

Sticky notes on the wall don’t make you innovative.

But you wouldn’t know that from how MBAs and execs talk about IDEO.

Business and design schools love to deify firms like IDEO: glossy case studies, photos of studios plastered in Post-its, slogans about “design for good.”

The message is clear: Copy the theater, and you’ll copy the results.

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What they don’t mention

• IDEO fails too, it’s just those stories don’t get published.
• Clout is a marketing tactic, and the case study is the brochure.
• Innovation isn’t exclusive to big-name agencies, and copying their rituals won’t replicate their impact.
• Surface-level understanding does not lead to substance. Sticky notes won’t fix systemic blockers in your organisation.

This isn’t a shot at IDEO — they’re obviously great at what they do, or they wouldn’t be where they are, and we wouldn’t be bringing them up as an example here.

The critique is at how IDEO gets canonized as the model of innovation, instead of being studied critically like any other firm with strengths and weaknesses.

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The MBA problem

And honestly, it feels like too many MBA programs focused on innovation fail to study IDEO critically.

You’d learn just as much, maybe more, about innovation from Charles & Ray Eames than from another IDEO marketing strategy disguised as a method.

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The reality of innovation

Real innovation isn’t sticky notes, slogans, or glossy videos.
It’s messy, constrained, and measured by outcomes, not your aura.

Innovation education should teach us how to navigate incentives, trade-offs, and accountability.
Instead, we’re still being fed IDEO worship.