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Tech conferences have become modern revival meetings. Founders take the stage to share their “moment of revelation,” conveniently forgetting the three years of mundane iteration that preceded it. That AI platform “conceived during a meditation retreat?” Look closer and you’ll find a team that spent 36 months methodically testing algorithms while their founder was busy fundraising.
As a product manager who’s spent years in the trenches of technology development, I’ve watched countless innovations get rewritten into neat, dramatic narratives that bear little resemblance to how they actually unfolded. The messy reality never makes it into the keynote speeches.
Related: Most Entrepreneurs (Unintentionally) Lie When They Tell Their Stories, and They’re Setting You Up for Failure
The disruption theater
The stories we tell about technological change have about as much relation to reality as superhero origin stories do to actual scientific progress. Nobody gets bitten by a radioactive algorithm. Yet, the innovation industry thrives on selling the myth that transformation comes in blinding flashes rather than through persistence. It’s easier to sell tickets to disruption theater than to workshops on incremental improvement.
Look, visionaries matter. But so do the people who turn visions into functioning systems that don’t crash every time a customer tries to log in. For every celebrated founder with a “revolutionary idea,” there are dozens of product managers, engineers and designers who transformed that half-baked concept into something that actually works.
The long, boring road to “overnight” success
Look at nearly any “disruptive” company’s actual development timeline. The carefully curated origin story masks years of wrong turns and dead ends. That “game-changing” enterprise software? It typically begins as a solution to some mundane problem nobody else cared about fixing. For years, it exists as “that weird project some engineers are tinkering with.” Then suddenly, it’s “visionary,” but only after it finally works.
Most technological progress resembles geological change more than volcanic eruptions. It’s the steady pressure that ultimately reshapes landscapes. Nobody stands around watching continents drift, yet here we are.
In my experience leading product teams, breakthrough moments are almost always preceded by countless small decisions, course corrections and unglamorous compromises. The final product that seems so elegantly obvious in hindsight was anything but obvious during development.
Related: Don’t Be Fooled By Overnight Success Stories — Building a Business Takes More Time Than You Think. Here’s How to Play the Long Game.
Why organizations, not technologies, determine success
Two competing companies implement identical technology stacks. One transforms their industry; the other files for bankruptcy. The difference isn’t the technology. It’s organizational factors that never make the business magazine profiles. Things like whether middle managers were included in decision processes. Whether training was treated as an afterthought. Whether teams were given time to adapt workflows. Not exactly the stuff of keynote speeches.
The innovation industry has a vested interest in making technological change seem both mystical and purchasable — an impressive trick when you think about it. Sort of like selling both the disease and the cure, but with better branding.
The unsung heroes of real innovation
The people who actually transform companies aren’t usually in the innovation awards photos. They’re the ones creating understandable documentation when the official materials are incomprehensible. They’re running unofficial training sessions during lunch breaks. They’re building shadow support systems that make everything work.
We’ve created entire industries dedicated to selling innovation frameworks that do everything except acknowledge the actual mechanics of change. Anyway, good luck getting that on a consultant’s proposal.
From a product management perspective, I’ve seen the most substantial technological advances emerge not from mystical “aha” moments but from teams that maintained a steady focus on solving real problems for real users. These teams valued learning over fanfare, feedback over speculation and adaptation over rigid planning.
What this means for your business
Most companies are desperately searching for the next big thing while systematically undermining the small, consistent improvements that actually drive progress. They fund innovation labs while starving maintenance budgets — which is like investing in expedition gear while your house foundation crumbles. Want to know if a company is serious about innovation? Check whether they celebrate failed experiments as much as successes.
Here’s what really matters:
First, value persistence over brilliant flashes of insight. The teams that succeed aren’t necessarily the smartest. They’re the ones that keep showing up, day after day, refining their approach based on what they learn.
Second, invest in implementation, not just ideation. A mediocre strategy executed brilliantly almost always outperforms a brilliant strategy executed poorly. This means allocating resources for training, documentation and organizational change — not just development.
Third, recognize and reward the real drivers of technological change. Those quiet, competent people solving problems behind the scenes often create more value than the loudest voices in the room.
Related: To Achieve Sustainable Success, You Need to Stop Focusing on Disruption. Here’s Why — and What You Must Focus on Instead.
Maybe the most disruptive thing we could do is stop obsessing over disruption. Instead of chasing unicorns, companies might try paying attention to the workhorses already moving their organizations forward — one unremarkable day at a time. That’s not the story that makes for exciting keynotes. But it’s the story that actually builds lasting value.
The next time you hear an innovation story that sounds too clean, too perfect, too dramatic — it probably is. Behind every “disruption” is a long trail of boring decisions, ignored warnings, failed attempts and incremental improvements that only look revolutionary when you skip over all the hard parts.
Tech conferences have become modern revival meetings. Founders take the stage to share their “moment of revelation,” conveniently forgetting the three years of mundane iteration that preceded it. That AI platform “conceived during a meditation retreat?” Look closer and you’ll find a team that spent 36 months methodically testing algorithms while their founder was busy fundraising.
As a product manager who’s spent years in the trenches of technology development, I’ve watched countless innovations get rewritten into neat, dramatic narratives that bear little resemblance to how they actually unfolded. The messy reality never makes it into the keynote speeches.
Related: Most Entrepreneurs (Unintentionally) Lie When They Tell Their Stories, and They’re Setting You Up for Failure
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