Innovation Theatre vs. Real Innovation: Why University Innovation Projects Often Fail to Stick

By John Melton, Strategic Partnerships Portfolio Lead / 14 January 2026

If you walk into any UK university today, you'll probably find ‘innovation’ everywhere. Innovation labs. Innovation strategies. Innovation workshops. Innovation awards...

Yet for all this activity, many university leaders share a quiet frustration: despite significant investment in innovation initiatives, meaningful change often remains unrealised. Projects launch, generate initial enthusiasm, then quietly fade as the institution returns to business as usual. The workshop outputs are shelved. The pilot programme quietly closes. The new approach becomes just another thing we tried that one time.

Let’s call this ‘innovation theatre’. This is activity that looks like innovation, but doesn’t create lasting transformation. And it costs the sector a lot, not just in wasted time and resources, but in damaged trust, change fatigue, and missed opportunities for genuine innovation.

How to recognise innovation theatre

These common patterns distinguish innovation theatre from genuine, sustainable innovation:

Innovation as an event, not for the long term

We’ve all been there: a dynamic facilitator leads an energising workshop. There are lots of sticky notes – lots of them. Ideas flow. Participants leave buzzing. Then... nothing changes. The insights never translate to daily operations. The big ideas never connect with budgets, workflows, or decision-making processes.

This happens because the innovation work exists in parallel to, rather than integrated with, how the university actually operates. Innovation becomes something you do on special occasions, not how you approach ongoing work. Without explicit connections between innovation activities and operational reality, even brilliant ideas will stall.

Alternatively, real innovation becomes part of the institutional rhythm. It shows up in how meetings are structured, how problems are framed, how resources are allocated, and how progress is reviewed. The question shifts from ‘when is the innovation session?’ to ‘how are we approaching this challenge differently?’.

Copying without context

When facing pressure to innovate, universities often look to what others are doing. If a peer institution launched a successful initiative, then why shouldn’t we try it? But this is just adopting approaches that worked elsewhere without adequately considering your own institutional context, culture, and capabilities.

The challenge isn't learning from others (we should continue to do so); it’s not contextualising those learnings to suit your specific context. Every university has distinct strengths, constraints, histories, and cultures. An approach that is successful in one university may fail in another, not because the idea was bad but because the context that made it work elsewhere was missing or misunderstood.

Real innovation requires institutions to be honest about their starting point, build on existing strengths, and adapt others’ ideas to fit their own reality. This means asking not just ‘what did they do?’, but ‘why did it work for them, and what would need to be true here for it to work for us?’.

Innovation as addition, not evolution

Probably the most exhausting form of innovation theatre is the constant addition of new initiatives without retiring old ones. Every year brings new priorities, new projects, new frameworks… all piled on top of existing commitments. Staff struggle under competing priorities, spreading their capacity even thinner, and ultimately doing nothing well at all.

This pattern reveals a fundamental misunderstanding: innovation isn't about doing more things; it's about doing things differently. It means making difficult choices about what to stop, simplify, or redesign. Without this, innovation unintentionally reinforces the status quo by making change feel overwhelming and unsustainable.

Sustainable innovation creates capacity by eliminating low-value work, streamlining processes, and clarifying what matters most. It makes us asks uncomfortable questions: What can we stop doing? What should we do less of to do other things better? Where is complexity serving no purpose? These conversations are harder than launching new initiatives, but they're essential for genuine transformation.

Innovation without capability-building

Innovation initiatives often focus entirely on the content of change (the new process, the revised structure, the updated policy), but they often neglect the capabilities people need to implement that change. The result: even successful pilots hit a brick wall when external support withdraws, because the institution hasn't developed its own capacity to maintain and embed the innovation.

This shows up in several ways. Subject matter experts are parachuted in to solve problems, but they don't transfer knowledge. Solutions are designed for people rather than with them, leaving users unable to adapt the approach. Training focuses on using new tools rather than developing the skills to for continuous improvement.

Real innovation builds institutional capability. It develops people's capability to identify problems, generate solutions, make decisions, and drive continuous improvement. It treats every initiative as an opportunity for capacity-building, ensuring that when projects end, the university is stronger and more capable than it was before.

From innovation theatre to real innovation

So how do universities move beyond innovation theatre to create genuine, lasting change?

Start with honesty about current capability

Before launching any innovation initiatives, universities need to undertake an honest assessment of their current capabilities. What are we genuinely good at? Where do we struggle? What capacity do we realistically have for change? This self-reflection helps prevents the mistake of designing ambitious programmes that the organisation lacks the capability to deliver.

This doesn't mean lowering ambition. It means being strategic about sequencing, sometimes building foundational capabilities before pursuing more ambitious change, or starting with areas where existing strengths provide a solid starting point.

Connect innovation to strategy

Innovation can't be everything to everyone. It needs clear connection to institutional strategy and explicit criteria for measuring success. What challenges are we trying to solve? What opportunities are we trying to seize? How does this innovation initiative connect to those goals?

This helps universities avoid the scattergun approach of pursuing every interesting idea. It creates focus, concentrates resources, and makes it easier to evaluate whether innovation efforts are creating real value, or just additional burden.

Design for sustainability from day one

Genuine innovation initiatives are sustainable from the start. They ask: What capabilities need to exist for this to continue? Who needs to own this long-term? How will this integrate into existing structures and processes? What resources will it require, and where will they come from?

This means sometimes saying ‘no’ to great ideas that can't be sustained. It means designing solutions that work within institutional constraints, not just in ideal conditions. It means investing in capability-building alongside solution implementation.

Create permission to stop

One of the most powerful innovations a university can make is giving people permission to stop doing things. This requires leadership courage to acknowledge that not every initiative was successful, that contexts change, and that persistence isn't always admirable. Pilots are pilots – they’re not all meant to be successful.

Universities might establish regular review cycles where initiatives are assessed against strategy and some are retired. They might create ‘innovation sandpits’ where some experiments are expected to fail, making failure a source of learning. They might celebrate discontinuation of low-impact work as much as launching new initiatives.

Embrace messy

Real innovation is messy. It involves experimentation, unexpected challenges, course corrections, and challenging conversations. Innovation theatre, by contrast, tends to be suspiciously smooth because it’s primarily superficial.

Universities need to build tolerance for messy experimentation. This means creating psychological safety for people to surface problems early, treating setbacks as learning opportunities, and accepting that the journey to success often runs through confusion and difficulty.

Innovation as a capability, not a department

Maybe the biggest shift required is reconceiving innovation itself, not as something performed by specific individuals, but as a core institutional capability that informs how everyone works.

This doesn't mean everyone needs to be radically innovating. It means developing institution-wide capability for continuous improvement, creative problem-solving, and thoughtful adaptation. It means building cultures where people feel empowered to question unhelpful processes, experiment with better approaches, and learn from both success and failure.

The way forward

Moving beyond innovation theatre doesn't require massive resources or major organisational change. Instead, it means thinking about what innovation truly means, more honesty about institutional reality, and more discipline about connecting initiatives to capacity and strategy.

It also requires patience. Real innovation takes time to embed and spread. Quick wins matter, but sustainable change unfolds over years, not months.

For university leaders frustrated by innovation initiatives that haven't delivered transformation, the question isn't whether to pursue innovation (that remains essential), but how to pursue it more effectively. That begins with recognising innovation theatre for what it is: impressive performance without lasting impact.

Real innovation is harder work. It's less glamorous than launching exciting new initiatives. But it's also more honest, more sustainable, and ultimately more powerful in creating institutions capable of navigating whatever challenges lie ahead.

Strive Higher works with universities to build institutional capability for sustainable innovation and transformation. Our Sector Insights v02 report, 'Highlighting innovation in our sector', explores how UK institutions are fostering innovation across improving services, enhancing experiences, strengthening culture, and developing talent.

Get in touch to discuss how we can support your institution's journey.