The Identity Dimension of Venturing
Federico Malatesta on why innovation fails at the human level.
Why Innovation Fails:
The Hidden Identity Cost of Change w/Federico Malatesta.
In this conversation on the Corporate Venturing Podcast with Davide Ritorto, Federico Malatesta explores why corporate ventures frequently stall or fail, not due to flawed strategy or weak business cases, but because organizations underestimate the identity costs of bringing something new into the world.
The dialogue moves beyond toolkits and frameworks to examine the psychological and political dimensions that determine whether innovation takes root or gets rejected.
This episode is relevant for innovation leaders, venture builders, and executives sponsoring new initiatives who sense that the real obstacles aren't strategic but human, and who want practical language for navigating the identity work that determines success.
Expanded Notes
Clarifying the ideas that move too fast in conversation.
Podcasts reward breadth over depth. My conversation with Davide covered ground from neuroscience of resistance to corporate venturing's political architecture, but ideas had to move fast.
You know the experience: something lands, you think "I wish they'd stayed there longer", but the conversation moves on.
The "Expanded Notes" document (download below) elaborates on ideas necessarily compressed during the episode, particularly on emotional rewiring, identity, and organizational dynamics, for leaders who sensed something important and want precision.
The Identity Dimension Checklist
A practical tool for leaders navigating corporate venturing.
When corporate ventures run into trouble, the business case is seldom the problem. The human mind defaults to protecting familiar stories and reconstructing the past in ways that resist change. This checklist focuses on what most planning overlooks: the identity work required to bring something new into an established organization.
A central theme is the concept of narrative antibodies, the defensive language and behaviors that emerge when a new venture threatens established identities. When functional leaders and middle managers say "this isn't scalable" or "interesting, but irrelevant," they are often protecting a sense of competence built over decades. The episode explains why this resistance is predictable, and what leaders can do to anticipate and address it before it compounds.
The conversation also distinguishes between three forms of capital at risk in any venturing context: identity capital (the idea of leadership image), professional capital (reputation and track record), and political capital (relational networks and alliances). Federico argues that sponsors of new ventures must actively manage all three, not just build business cases.
Drawing on examples from Amazon Web Services (where Jeff Bezos created an encompassing narrative) and Xerox (where a rigid identity prevented the company from capitalizing on its own inventions), the episode illustrates why it's not enough to teach innovation, you must coach identity transition.
Reimagine what is next.
Transformational and Executive coaching for leaders navigating high-stakes transitions - when the old narrative no longer fits the facts.
Work with Federico