The Heart of the Innovation Process
Questioning the status quo is a leadership principle that moves straight to the heart of innovation decision-making. It can be an essential element to innovation leadership, forming key teams, and building the right innovative culture.
As a UC Berkeley ExecEd article on “The Power of Questioning the Status Quo,” puts it, “It allows us to explore different perspectives, weigh different opinions, and let common goals and truths (rather than our assumptions or fears) guide us toward a better future.”
In fact, this principle stands as one of the foundations of the university’s Haas School of Business: “We thrive at the epicenter of innovation. We make progress by speaking our minds even when it challenges convention. We lead by championing bold ideas and taking intelligent risks.”
Berkeley further posits that questioning the status quo is a mindset, one that can be trained and developed over time. These characteristics show a tendency to excel at recognizing the vital elements of a current situation, exploring multiple perspectives, and taking the necessary actions to affect change:
- Observant: Being observant doesn’t come naturally to everyone. Those who are more innately observant than others tend to spot problems more easily, recognize outdated habits, and quickly identify when particular strategies are no longer working. They can also acquire helpful information and apply in new ways—in their relationships, careers, and businesses.
- Agile-Minded: Agile-mindedness means being capable of approaching situations with a blank slate, remaining open to all possibilities, and entertaining diverse viewpoints and thinking processes. This quality allows us to recognize opportunities that may not be immediately apparent and are essential for creativity and bringing new solutions to old problems. It also helps our brains process information and remain flexible.
- Courageous: Courage is a quality that provides us with inner strength, allowing us to perform the often-uncomfortable tasks necessary to make change happen—for ourselves or others. It empowers us to ask hard questions, engage in difficult conversations, and seek the truth—no matter how inconvenient.
FEI Summit Spotlight: Challenging the Status Quo
The FEI: Innovation Summit will be held October 5-6, 2026, at The Colorado Convention Center, Denver. The summit will be co-located with TMRE.
The session, “Challenging the Status Quo,” will be presented by Cordell Hardy, R&D Vice President, Food North America at Cargill; Cristina Garcia-Cevigon, SVP, Growth Strategy, Portfolio & Innovation at MARS; and Rick Robinson, Vice President and General Manager, AgeTech Collaborative at AARP.
Breakthrough innovation requires challenging assumptions and taking smart risks. In this panel, leaders discuss how they design experiments, test bold ideas, and manage innovation portfolios without putting the business at unnecessary risk. Learn how companies push beyond the status quo while maintaining strategic discipline.
Click here for more information about the FEI: Innovation Summit
Driving Degrees of Change
Questioning the status quo is a powerful capability that may have certain inherent characteristics, as Berkeley detailed above, but nevertheless it is likely exhibited differently with each individual, environment, and experience. That being said, Berkeley offers a general framework including:
- Identify an Opportunity or Need: Is something not working, or might it soon become an issue if not changed? Is there an opportunity to make something better?
- Ask Questions: To better understand the issue, it’s crucial to do your research and ask questions to get at the heart of the matter, understand the context, and challenge assumptions.
- Create a Change Statement: Once you know more about the situation, a clear, straightforward ‘change statement’ (identifying what you want to change) will help you remain focused.
- Explore Ideas and Weigh Options: Next, come up with ideas to address the issue. It might help first to ask, “How might we…” (insert the actionable part of the change statement).
- Gather Allies: Partner with others who can contribute to and support this change.
- Propose Change: Clarify your pitch, prototype your solution (if possible), and communicate it to your team and stakeholders.
- Implement Change: Implementing change might be a simple feat or lengthy and involved, depending on the chosen solution and degree of change.
Getting Out of Your Comfort Zone
As Frog/Capgemini Invent notes in its article, “The Key to Innovation: Challenging the Status Quo,” this is a process or journey that at times can be uncomfortable. It may sound deceptively simple, but first one has to define the status quo at their organization, identify the old way of doing things and move forward in a new way.
“The first step in that process is identifying what the team or organization is actually doing–not what you say you do or what your customers think you do, but what you actually do,” advises Frog. “What are the tools, processes and products that make the organization tick? This constellation of factors is the status quo that you will need to interrogate and disrupt if you want to innovate. Once you’ve taken stock of your own status quo, the most important question is: Why do we do these things in these ways? The point of asking the question is not necessarily to burn the status quo to the ground completely, but to identify the elements within it that are preventing innovation.”
This may also mean challenging your own leadership qualities (and to be prepared for others to question your values and beliefs).
As Frog notes, “Innovation is not easy, and many organizations fail because they cannot shift their status quo. But if you feel prepared to challenge your own decisions and beliefs for the benefit of the organization, you are ready to begin the journey toward innovation.”
Video: “How status quo bias makes change difficult,” courtesy of Sullivan & Stanley.
