Upgrading Your Messy Middle: Lessons from a Peer Exchange on Incubation
At the 2025 IMPACT conference hosted by InnoLead, SmartOrg’s Doug Williams and David Matheson led an energetic 60-minute session titled “Upgrading Your Messy Middle: A Peer Exchange on Incubation Practices.” The workshop brought together innovation leaders from across industries—from energy and insurance to media, manufacturing, and education—to explore the realities of incubation: that crucial “messy middle” between discovery and acceleration where great ideas either gain traction or quietly fade away.
Setting the Stage: What We Mean by Incubation
Doug and David opened the session by framing incubation as the phase where promising ideas are transformed into investable opportunities. It’s the space where teams balance ambition with discipline—expanding the upside while systematically reducing the downside. The goal isn’t just to build confidence in the idea, but to build confidence in the business case that ultimately earns funding and buy-in from decision makers.
Participants were introduced to SmartOrg’s working vocabulary for incubation—vet, value, validate, and visualize—a practical framework for aligning on what really drives progress. Rather than debating terminology, the group agreed to adopt this shared language for the discussion so everyone could focus on the challenges and best practices of making incubation work in their own organizations.
The Icebreaker: Rolling the Dice on Uncertainty
To get things started, attendees used a playful “incubation simulator”—a die labeled with words like complexity, ambiguity, and conflict—to spark conversation about the forces that shape their incubation efforts. As laughter and chocolate circulated around the tables, participants quickly found common ground: everyone faces uncertainty, competing priorities, and cultural friction when trying to bring new ideas to life inside established organizations.
Mapping What Works — and What Doesn’t
The first major activity asked participants to capture what’s working (on green Post-its) and what’s tempting but not working (on red ones) in their incubation processes. The walls quickly filled with colorful examples drawn from lived experience—from effective stakeholder engagement and fast MVP testing to the pitfalls of too many management meetings, unclear decision rights, or “innovation-by-funnel” thinking.
Together, the group clustered their ideas into themes such as:
- MVP Validation – balancing speed with learning and keeping end users engaged throughout.
- Business Case as a Thinking Tool – using business cases to learn, not to promise.
- Incubation Budgeting – ensuring flexible funding for uncertain, fast-moving projects.
- Stakeholder Management – aligning leaders early and maintaining trust and communication.
- Culture and Collaboration – building empathy, trust, and openness to iteration.
From Insight to Headline
In the final exercise, participants formed small breakout groups to turn their cluster discussions into creative “headlines” for The InnoLead Times—short, punchy summaries of key insights expressed as if they were tomorrow’s news. Each team shared their headline in a brief, improvised “man on the street” interview, captured on video for posterity. The short read-outs were as entertaining as they were insightful—capturing the human side of incubation, with its mix of rigor, creativity, and chaos. Check them out in the video below:
Where We Go From Here
The workshop offered just a taste of what’s possible when innovation professionals share openly about their successes and struggles in incubation. For many, it reinforced that the messy middle is not a problem to be solved once and for all, but a capability to be continually strengthened.
At SmartOrg, we’re exploring the idea of hosting regional, day-long workshops that dive deeper into these themes—giving innovators more space to learn, experiment, and connect. Curious to learn more? Let us know.