Every industry has its mavericks. Organisations that consistently grow faster, adapt earlier, and seem unusually calm during periods of disruption. And that means building an effective innovation investment strategy is tough.
While most enterprises debate their innovation investment strategy based on how much to invest, high performers focus on where to place their bets. And their budgets reveal a distinct pattern. Cross-sector exposure beats incremental optimisation. And emerging areas like climate and AI are funded with intent rather than hype.
Outperformance starts with how money moves, not how much
It is tempting to believe that outperformers simply spend more on innovation. The data suggests otherwise.
Studies from McKinsey show that top-quartile companies do not necessarily invest more capital overall, but they reallocate it more aggressively. Capital moves faster toward emerging opportunities and away from underperforming initiatives.
This distinction matters. Innovation is not a line item. It is a dynamic system. Mavericks treat budget as a lever that evolves alongside strategy rather than a fixed annual commitment.
This is why their portfolios look different. Fewer stalled pilots. More decisive scaling. Clearer ownership.
Cross-sector investments widen the opportunity set
Rather than confining innovation spend to their immediate industry, leaders invest across sectors.
Automotive companies invest in software platforms. Financial institutions back climate infrastructure. Healthcare players explore AI tooling originally developed for retail or logistics.
A growing share of corporate venture activity now targets adjacent or non-core sectors precisely because the most valuable insights often come from outside the core.
Cross-sector exposure does two things. It expands optionality and reduces blind spots. Organisations become less dependent on any single market trajectory.
It’s why many mavericks maintain active venture portfolios even during downturns. They are not chasing short-term financial return. They are buying insight.
Climate budgets as strategic infrastructure, not ESG spend
Climate investment is one of the clearest markers separating leaders from followers.
In lagging organisations, climate budgets often sit within sustainability or compliance functions. In mavericks, climate spend increasingly lives alongside core strategy and innovation.
The reason is simple. Climate is no longer a reputational issue. It is an operational and financial one.
The World Economic Forum has consistently ranked climate-related risks among the top global business threats. Forward-looking organisations treat climate capabilities as strategic infrastructure.
This includes investments in energy efficiency, carbon tracking, alternative materials, and climate data platforms. These are not side projects. They directly impact cost structures, supply chain resilience, and regulatory exposure.
AI budgets reflect maturity, not excitement
AI spending offers another revealing contrast.
Most organisations are excited about AI. Mavericks are specific.
Rather than spreading small bets across dozens of use cases, high performers concentrate spend where AI meaningfully changes unit economics or customer experience. They fund data foundations before flashy applications.
MIT Sloan research shows that companies capturing value from AI focus less on algorithms and more on organisational readiness. This includes talent, data quality, and process integration.
The cost of concentration versus the cost of diffusion
One of the most common mistakes in innovation spending is diffusion. Too many initiatives, too little depth.
Mavericks choose concentration. They place fewer bets but fund them properly.
This is not about being conservative. It is about acknowledging that scale requires focus. Underfunded initiatives rarely deliver transformative outcomes.
Our article on what to fund and what to kill explored how diffusion creates the illusion of progress. Mavericks avoid this by committing capital decisively once conviction is earned.
They also revisit those convictions regularly. Concentration does not mean stubbornness. It means clarity.
Why mavericks accept asymmetry in outcomes
A defining feature of high-performing innovation portfolios is asymmetry.
Mavericks expect most initiatives to fail or deliver modest returns. They design portfolios where a small number of successes more than offset the rest.
This mindset is well documented in venture capital, but less common inside enterprises. Yet organisations like Alphabet have openly embraced this approach through structures such as X, their moonshot factory.
As Astro Teller famously said in an interview with Wired, “The faster you kill a project, the more resources you free up for the next one.”
Asymmetry only works when failure is accepted early and capital is recycled quickly. Mavericks build systems to do exactly that.
Governance that enables movement rather than control
Governance often determines whether innovation spend accelerates or stalls.
In underperforming organisations, governance exists to minimise risk. In mavericks, it exists to enable informed risk-taking.
This shows up in decision cadence. Faster review cycles. Clear escalation paths. Fewer committees with overlapping mandates.
According to research published by PwC, organisations with streamlined innovation governance are significantly more likely to scale new initiatives successfully.
Governance does not disappear. It becomes sharper.
Linking spend to future optionality
One of the most useful lenses mavericks apply is optionality.
They ask not just what an initiative delivers today, but what doors it opens tomorrow. Does this investment create new capabilities? Does it expand strategic choices?
This framing explains why talent, cross-sector exposure, climate infrastructure, and AI foundations receive sustained funding. They increase the organisation’s ability to respond to future uncertainty.
What laggards misinterpret about maverick behaviour
From the outside, mavericks can appear reckless. They kill projects quickly. They fund unfamiliar areas. They tolerate ambiguity.
In reality, their behaviour is highly disciplined. What looks like risk-taking is often the result of clearer prioritisation and stronger feedback loops.
They are not betting blindly. They are updating beliefs faster.
This is the core advantage. Not better prediction, but better adaptation.
Spending patterns as a cultural signal
Budgets communicate values more clearly than strategy documents.
When talent is funded early, teams feel trusted. When pilots are either scaled or killed decisively, teams feel respected. When climate and AI are treated as strategic, teams align their efforts accordingly.
Mavericks understand this. Their spending patterns reinforce the behaviours they want to see.
Outperformance is designed, not accidental
Where mavericks spend is not random. It is the outcome of deliberate choices repeated over time.
Talent first. Teams over projects. Cross-sector exposure. Climate as infrastructure. AI with intent. Concentration over diffusion. Optionality over comfort.
These choices compound. Not every bet works, but the system does.
In a world where uncertainty is the norm, outperforming organisations are not those with the best forecasts. They are the ones whose budgets are built to adapt.
Sources
- https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/strategy-and-corporate-finance/our-insights/strategy-to-beat-the-market
- https://hbr.org/2019/01/the-leaders-guide-to-corporate-culture
- https://www.cbinsights.com/research/corporate-venture-capital-trends/
- https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/expanding-ais-impact-with-organizational-learning/
- https://www.weforum.org/reports/global-risks-report-2024/
- https://www.wired.com/story/x-moonshot-factory-failure/
- https://www.pwc.com/gx/en/services/consulting/innovation.html
