Too often senior executives are warned to stay out of the labs and avoid interfering with “geniuses at work” in a company's innovation projects. This reinforces a broad pattern that causes innovation initiatives to dive under the radar and diverge from a company's strategic agenda.

The results: lots of innovation projects that head off in different directions, achieving no integrated impact, as well as big difficulties choosing which projects to foster or kill, leading to practices where top executives say little more than what financial targets 'innovation' must achieve. Companies, divisions, and brands should create an "innovation intent" to declare their stretch goals.