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Hey there, innovation champions! Melissa Dinwiddie here.
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When you were a kid, did you ever experience a blackout, or a hurricane, that disrupted normal life for a bit? Maybe you had to go without electricity or water for a day or two.
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If it's for a short time, that kind of thing can actually be almost like a forced vacation in a way. You can't work, because you have no power, and suddenly you have to think of new ways to do things you normally do on autopilot.
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Lighting candles instead of reaching for a light switch.
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Digging in cupboards for a camping stove, if you have one, instead of using the rangetop or microwave.
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You have to get creative.
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And in the immediate aftermath, when all your energy is focused on solving your immediate needs, you're firing on all cylinders. Your brain is sharp, your problem-solving is laser-focused, and somehow you find ingenious solutions you never would have thought of under normal circumstances.
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But what happens when the emergency keeps dragging on?
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Innovation thrives on pushing against challenges. But it does not thrive on burnout.
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The Hidden Threat to Sustained Innovation

Here's what I've learned working with tech teams over the past several years: the same pressure that initially sparks innovation can become its biggest enemy if we don't manage it properly.
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Think about it. In the early days of a crisis—whether it's a natural disaster or a business emergency—adrenaline kicks in. Teams rally together. Hierarchy flattens as everyone focuses on the immediate problem. People feel empowered to try wild solutions because the usual rules don't apply.
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But crisis mode isn't sustainable. And here's where most organizations get it wrong: they try to maintain that crisis-level intensity indefinitely, thinking that's the secret to sustained innovation.
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It's not. It's the recipe for creative burnout.
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I see this pattern repeatedly in the organizations I work with. Teams start strong during a crisis or major challenge, but after months of maintaining that intensity, their most creative people become exhausted. The constant pressure to innovate paradoxically kills their ability to innovate. They get stuck in reactive mode, too depleted to think strategically or imagine new possibilities.
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Sound familiar?
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The Peak Innovation Paradox

This is what I call the Peak Innovation Paradox: the very conditions that create breakthrough innovation—urgency, pressure, resource constraints—can also destroy our capacity for sustained creativity if we don't understand how to work with them.
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Think of it like physical fitness. A challenging workout can make you stronger, but if you never allow for recovery, you'll eventually break down. Your innovation capacity works the same way.
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The key isn't avoiding pressure or challenges—it's learning how to cycle through them in a way that builds resilience rather than depleting it.
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This is where my Create the Impossible™ framework becomes essential for maintaining creative momentum over the long haul.
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Play Hard: The Recovery Revolution

The first principle, Play Hard, is often the first thing teams abandon when they're under pressure. "We don't have time for play," they say. "This is serious business."
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But here's what neuroscience tells us: play isn't the opposite of serious work. It's what makes serious work sustainable.
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When we're in constant crisis mode, our brains get stuck in what researchers call "threat rigidity"—we can only see a narrow range of solutions, usually ones that worked in the past. Play literally rewires our neural pathways, helping us see new possibilities and connections.
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Imagine a team that's been grinding for months on a complex technical challenge. Everyone's exhausted, tensions are high, and creative thinking has flatlined. What if, instead of pushing harder, they instituted something like "Failure Fridays"—spending an hour each week sharing their biggest failures and turning them into learning opportunities, maybe even comedy skits?
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It might sound frivolous when you're under pressure, but research shows that this kind of purposeful play can dramatically improve both innovation output and team retention.
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The key is making play purposeful. It's not about ping pong tables and bean bags—though those can be nice. It's about creating structured opportunities for mental recovery and perspective-shifting.
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Make Crap: Permission to Recharge

The second principle, Make Crap, becomes even more crucial when you're trying to maintain momentum over time. When teams are exhausted, perfectionism becomes their worst enemy.
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Picture a team that's been iterating on a product redesign for months. Every prototype has to be "perfect" before they'll show it to stakeholders. The pressure is paralyzing them—they're spending more time polishing than innovating.
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What if they instituted something like "Ugly Tuesday"—a weekly session where they have to present the ugliest, most half-baked version of their ideas? No PowerPoint slides, no polished mockups. Just rough sketches and honest conversations about what they're trying to solve.
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This kind of systematic permission to be imperfect often unlocks rapid progress. When you remove the pressure to have everything polished, you free up mental energy for actual innovation instead of endless refinement.
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When you're managing creative momentum over time, you need to build in systematic permission to produce work that isn't ready for prime time. It's like clearing the creative pipes—you have to get the mediocre ideas out before the brilliant ones can flow.
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Learn Fast: The Momentum Multiplier

The third principle, Learn Fast, is what transforms short-term innovation spurts into sustained creative momentum. But here's the crucial distinction: learning fast doesn't mean moving fast. It means extracting maximum insight from every experiment, every failure, every small success.
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Too many teams confuse activity with progress. They're constantly launching new initiatives, pivoting every month, chasing the next shiny opportunity. But they never slow down long enough to understand what's actually working and why.
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Imagine a scale-up that's launching a new feature every two weeks. Sounds impressive, right? But what if 80% of those features are barely being used? They'd be innovating fast, but not learning fast.
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A better approach might be learning sprints. Every two weeks, instead of launching something new, the team does a deep dive on one recent launch: What worked? What didn't? What surprised them? What would they do differently?
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This kind of systematic learning often reveals that sustainable innovation isn't about constant novelty—it's about building on what you discover works.
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The Rhythm of Sustainable Innovation

Here's what I've learned after watching countless teams try to maintain creative momentum: innovation needs rhythm. It's not a marathon run at sprint pace—it's more like interval training.
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You need periods of intense focus and experimentation, followed by periods of reflection and consolidation. You need time to play and explore, followed by time to execute and refine. You need space to make crap, followed by time to polish the gems you've discovered.
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Most importantly, you need to treat your creative capacity like the renewable resource it is. It can be depleted, but it can also be restored—if you understand how to work with it rather than against it.
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The teams that maintain creative momentum over years, not just months, are the ones that have learned to cycle through the Create the Impossible™ framework deliberately and systematically.

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They don't just play hard when they feel like it—they schedule it. They don't just make crap when they're stuck—they build it into their process. They don't just learn fast when they fail—they extract insights from every experience.
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Your Innovation Sustainability Challenge

So here's your challenge for this week: Take a step back and assess the rhythm of innovation in your team or organization.
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Are you trying to maintain crisis-level intensity indefinitely? Are you giving your team permission to play, to experiment, to learn from imperfection?
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Look at your calendar. Where are the built-in recovery periods? Where are the scheduled times for exploration and experimentation? When was the last time someone on your team was celebrated for an interesting failure rather than just successful outcomes?
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Remember: Peak innovation isn't about reaching maximum intensity and staying there. It's about finding the sustainable rhythm that keeps your creative momentum flowing over time.
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And in our AI-driven world, where change is the only constant, this ability to maintain creative momentum isn't just nice to have—it's your competitive advantage.
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The companies that will thrive aren't the ones that burn brightest for a moment, but the ones that can sustain their innovative fire year after year.
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Stay curious, stay playful, and keep creating the impossible!

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​I'd love to hear from you: What's one thing that's helped you maintain creative momentum during challenging times? Share your insights in the comments below!

Senior Leaders: Ready to build sustainable innovation into your organization's DNA? Book a complimentary Innovation Strategy Session and let's explore how the Create the Impossible™ framework can help your team maintain creative momentum without burning out.

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🎧 Melissa In the Wild!

✨ What If Vegas Held the Secret to Innovation?
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​That’s not the setup to a joke—it’s one of the metaphors I unpack in my recent conversation on the An Hour of Innovation podcast. We talk about why “Play Hard, Make Crap, and Learn Fast” isn’t just a creative motto—it’s a practical framework for unlocking innovation inside even the most structured organizations.
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If you're a leader, builder, or deep thinker navigating complexity and change, this episode is for you.
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🎧 Listen now:

​YouTube​

​Spotify​

​Apple

​Website
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I started my morning with a teeny tiny doodle.
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Call it spontaneous, improvisational, abstract artwork if you like—but really, it’s my daily dose of creative medicine.
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Why do I engage in this practice? I started making improvisational artwork as an antidote to my dyed-in-the-wool perfectionist tendencies.
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There’s something incredibly healing about intentionally making something NOT perfect, intentionally allowing it to be whatever it is, and appreciating it for its perfect imperfection.
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When we can do this with our doodles, it flexes our muscles to start doing the same for ourselves. And as leaders, it helps us create space for our teams to embrace imperfection too.
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You see, innovation doesn’t happen in the land of perfect. It happens in the messy middle—in those “crappy first drafts” that become stepping stones to breakthrough solutions.
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That teeny tiny doodle? It’s my daily reminder that:

• Starting is more important than perfecting
• Small actions compound into big transformations
• Permission to be imperfect unlocks unlimited potential

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This is exactly what my Create the Impossible™ framework teaches: Play Hard, Make Crap, Learn Fast. Because the most innovative companies aren’t the ones that wait for perfect conditions—they’re the ones that embrace beautiful imperfection and iterate quickly.
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Ready to help your team break free from perfectionist paralysis and unlock their creative potential? Let’s talk about how these principles can transform your organization’s approach to innovation.
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👉 Book your complimentary Innovation Strategy Session and discover how to create a culture where breakthrough ideas flourish.

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That's it for this week!
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Creatively yours,
Melissa

​P.S. When you’re ready to build a culture of thriving innovation, so your team can Create the Impossible™, here are three ways I can help:

1) Download my FREE Innovation Culture Assessment to evaluate where your team stands

2) Download the first 50 pages of my book, The Creative Sandbox Way™, to reconnect with your creativity

3) Click here to schedule a complimentary Innovation Strategy Session

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