Innovation isn't the goal. Performance is.
And the businesses that outpace their competition faster
commit to building an innovation capability.
The reason is this: performance eventually stagnates when it hits the improvement ceiling, the point when doing what you've always done stops moving the needle. When you're there, innovation isn't optional. It's the only lever left.
BCG, 2024
CBIZ x NCMM, 2026
West Monroe, 2026
McKinsey & Company
Every business hits the ceiling.
Performance follows a predictable arc: Launch. Grow. Improve. But then the gains stop. Most businesses don't see it coming until they're already stuck, and that's when customers move on, margins compress, and competitors gain ground.
When this happens, businesses must reimagine and reinvent how they operate — from internal process to delivering products that matter. And that's where innovation comes in with a single purpose: to unlock the next level of business performance, so improvement can do its thing again.
When your ceiling hits,
the system is ready.
Three phases and one reliable and repeatable system, from need to implemented solution. CREATE and INNOVATE are the engine for quick wins. PERFORM is the path to long-term sustainment and innovation transformation.
- Establish a common language
- Rewire mindsets for innovation
- Build creative capability and confidence
- Practice customer discovery as a discipline
- Build a prioritized list of scored Opportunity Points
- Identify the Opportunity Point
- Execute the innovation process from ideas to solutions
- Design comprehensive business models
- Test and learn from rapid prototyping
- Refine the solution for introduction
- Set innovation strategy and plan (Horizon / North Star)
- Manage a balanced innovation portfolio
- Build a path through Diffusion of Innovation
- Commercialize and measure performance
Six places to unlock
performance, fast.
Innovation isn't confined to one department. It shows up wherever performance has stalled, or when the business is ready to level up.
Customer Discovery
Traditional VOC can't cut it anymore. You have to get past what people say to what they actually mean.
Uncover what customers actually need. It will change how you prioritize resources, and how fast the market pulls in what you build next.
Customer Discovery
Traditional VOC can't cut it anymore. You have to get past what people say to what they actually mean.
Uncover what customers actually need. It will change how you prioritize resources, and how fast the market pulls in what you build next.
New Product Development
Most companies treat their New Product Development (NPD) process as fixed, while customer needs and competitors keep changing rapidly.
Build a customer-discovery driven process and a validated pipeline of what customers will actually buy next, not just what's easy to ship.
Process Innovation
You're investing in external growth while your internal legacy processes quietly bleed time and money.
Strip out the waste hiding in how things get done, streamline what's left, and free up your team to focus on the work that actually moves the business.
AI Strategy & Innovation Acceleration
AI is everywhere in the conversation, but nobody's sure where it fits in the actual work, so nothing moves.
Start small enough that your team can feel the difference, then use AI to move faster through the innovation process itself: wider exploration, sharper analysis, faster decisions.
Creative Problem Solving
Traditional approaches to problem solving result in the same recycled ideas and solutions with no real traction.
You already have the superpower in the room. Set it loose and it becomes new ideas, better solutions, and breakthroughs with real business value.
Cost Reduction
Costs are rising, and your team has to find where to cut without degrading the result.
Build a repeatable waste-identification process and a mentality around value engineering, so finding value becomes part of how your team works every day.
An AI-Assisted App That Accelerates Results.
The Innovation Fabric is a proprietary AI-driven collaborative platform that augments the human superpower with AI's vast knowledge to accelerate the innovation cycle, fill in gaps, and provide real-time synthesis.
Schedule a DemoMultiple AI Members join the canvas as working collaborators, not a chatbot on the side. They can add ideas, build on human input, and push insights into territory not explored yet.
Live session · AI brainstorm board · Citrus Extraction sprint
Innovation Fabric · Live AI-assisted brainstorm · Citrus Extraction sprint
Proof from
inside the room.
Numbers from real engagements. Names withheld where required, happy to walk through specifics on a call. Hover any card.
An equipment manufacturing company completed a 3-day sprint, preceded by a 1-day customer discovery focused on internal expert stakeholders. The team included everyone from technical engineers to executive leaders, with each participant noting it was a highly valuable investment of time and resources.
In just three days, the team went from conceptual ideas to high-fidelity physical prototypes, each with the potential to continue onto funded R&D projects. The Director of Innovation has engaged in more sprints since, proving the value to a $500 million+ business.
Over the course of two months and multiple virtual sprint sessions, a public utility rebuilt their regional budget allocation formula based on actual location need.
Most engagements don't end at one sprint. Clients come back — for the next domain, the next region, the next ceiling.
References upon request.
Because of well over a decade working with business leaders across almost every industry, I'll connect you with the right person based on your need.
Why I built CIP.
For well over a decade and across multiple industries, I've watched the same pattern. Capable leaders hit the improvement ceiling optimization can't break, and they struggle to find a path forward they can trust, and insource the capability to solve it themselves.
I built CIP to close that gap. I help businesses build sustainable capability through quick wins and long-term plans. And after a while, I transition from a consultant to a coach and mentor, supporting until it becomes ingrained into their DNA. For true change that matters, capability has to live inside your business, and I do everything I can to ensure that happens.
Undoubtedly, your team is already fully capable, they just need a new perspective on how to view the world around them. And we get there together.
Are you ready to
become the business to beat?
Or skip the quiz, reach out directly. No pitch, no pressure.
Wondering where to start? I'll recommend a first step based on where you are right now. And when you are ready, we can connect and determine how to find your team a quick win.
Every source, checkable.
Where the 5–10% comes from
The floor comes from the American Society for Quality's Cost of Poor Quality benchmark, built on Juran's 1951 Quality Control Handbook and Crosby's 1979 Quality Is Free. ASQ's own data: typical companies lose 10–20% of revenue to quality failure, underperformers lose up to 40%, top performing organizations lose under 5%. We use 5–10%: the range between the best performers and the documented floor for typical companies. We're not citing the higher end.
Source: ASQ, Cost of Poor Quality (COPQ) · Juran, Quality Control Handbook, 1951 · Crosby, Quality Is Free, 1979
Three research bodies. One number.
Decision speed. West Monroe's 2026 "Speed Wins" study surveyed 1,200+ business leaders and found up to 5% of annual revenue lost to slow decisions and execution, the "Slowness Tax." AI adoption alone doesn't fix it: individual productivity gains get absorbed by organizational friction before they reach the bottom line. It's a driver behind the ASQ number above, not a separate cost.
Source: West Monroe, "Speed Wins," January 2026
Process design. Lean Six Sigma traces to the Toyota Production System, formalized for Western industry by MIT's study of the global auto industry. In a typical unoptimized process, under 5% of total process time is value-added work. The rest is waiting, rework, and unnecessary handoffs. The U.S. EPA uses this methodology as official guidance for its own operational improvement programs. This explains the mechanism behind the ASQ percentage, not a second number to add on top.
Source: Lean Six Sigma / Toyota Production System · MIT International Motor Vehicle Program · U.S. EPA Lean & Six Sigma guidance
Quality failure. Covered above.
Three separate disciplines, decision science, process engineering, and quality management, independently converge on the same order of magnitude. That convergence is the evidence, not any single number.
And that's before the compounding costs
5–10% covers decision friction, process waste, and quality failure. It doesn't include the cost of losing people or customers as a result, both well-documented separately.
Talent. Replacing an employee costs 50–200% of their annual salary, depending on role and seniority. Leadership and specialist roles run toward the higher end.
Customers. Acquiring a new customer costs 5–25x more than retaining an existing one. A 5% improvement in retention lifts profit 25–95%.
Source: Gallup / SHRM turnover research · Bain & Company / Harvard Business Review, Frederick Reichheld
The gap between knowing and doing
BCG's 2024 Innovation Study surveyed over 1,000 senior innovation executives. 83% of companies rank innovation among their top 3 priorities. Only 3% qualify as innovation ready, down from 20% two years earlier. Most organizations are already past the improvement ceiling before they recognize it.
Source: BCG, "Innovation Systems Are in Need of a Reboot," 18th Annual Innovation Study, 2024
How this number was built
The 5–10% range is the conservative floor of ASQ's Cost of Poor Quality benchmark for typical companies. It's not a sum of multiple studies. Decision-speed research (West Monroe) and process-design research (Lean Six Sigma) are corroborating mechanisms behind that percentage, not additional costs stacked on top. Talent and customer costs above are real and well-documented but kept separate, not included in the 5–10% figure. Figures reflect independent studies using different methodologies, samples, and time periods. Treat the range as directional, not a precise measurement of your company's exposure.