Make Space for Creativity and Innovation

Editor’s Note: Many organisations are optimised for control, efficiency, and predictability. Innovation and creativity require the opposite conditions. This piece explores how to deliberately design space for creativity inside delivery systems—without relying on gimmicks like annual innovation weeks.

Make Space for Creativity and Innovation

Many organisations are built for control.
Control of cost.
Control of delivery.
Control of people, priorities, and risk.

Control is necessary
—but it has a hidden cost.
The tighter the system, the less space there is for innovation and creativity.

Creativity requires slack, space, and freedom.

It does not appear on command, nor does it thrive in a calendar that is filled to the brim.

Creativity Is Not a Quarterly Event

Many organisations treat creativity and innovation as a scheduled interruption:

• Innovation week
• Hackathon
• Quarterly creative sprint
• Annual offsite

These are better than nothing
—but they misunderstand how creativity actually works.

You cannot defer creativity to September.
You cannot summon innovation after nine months of exhaustion.
You cannot force ideas into a three-day window.

Creativity must be woven into the everyday fabric of work, not bolted on as an exception.

Slack Enables Flow

The first design principle is slack.

When delivery capacity is filled to the brim, the system becomes fragile. There is no space for:

• Unexpected problems
• New opportunities
• Learning
• Reflection
• Creative exploration

Overloaded systems do not move faster — they grind to a halt.

A Metaphor: The M25

The M25 motorway around London is designed for flow, not maximum capacity.
When it runs at full capacity, a single incident causes total gridlock.

Traffic control systems deliberately slow, batch, and space traffic to keep the system moving.

Work systems should operate the same way.

Flow requires slack.
Creativity requires slack.

Schedule Creativity as Business-as-Usual

The second principle is regular creative time.

When leading teams, I schedule a weekly block for creative problem solving
—every week, without exception.

Not a special event. Not an offsite. Not an innovation sprint.

Just time, deliberately protected, for:

• Improving processes
• Exploring ideas
• Testing experiments
• Reframing problems

Creativity is not spontaneous in organisations. It is designed for.

Innovation Thrives Outside Control

Control creates predictability.
Creativity requires freedom.

The role of leadership is not to demand innovation
— it is to create the climate where innovation becomes inevitable:

• Space in delivery capacity
• Time in the cadence
• Permission to experiment
• Psychological safety to try and fail

Over time, creativity stops being an initiative and becomes a habit of work.

The Cultivated View

Innovation is not a workshop.
Creativity is not a week in the calendar.

Both are emergent properties of systems with space, slack, and freedom.

If everything is controlled, scheduled, and optimised — nothing truly new will emerge.

Key Takeaways

• Creativity cannot be scheduled into existence once a year.
• Systems need slack to maintain flow and enable innovation.
• Regular creative time should be embedded in the delivery cadence.
• Leadership’s job is to design conditions, not demand outcomes.
• Over time, creativity becomes a daily behaviour—not a corporate programme.

Make space.
Ideas will fill it.