To scale creativity, leaders must stop waiting for lightning to strike — and start engineering the storm.

When you think of the world’s most innovative companies, it’s tempting to imagine a scrappy team of visionaries in a tiny room, spinning gold out of straw. But in reality, most large organizations struggle to innovate — not because they lack creative talent, but because their systems, cultures and processes are built for efficiency, not invention.

That’s the paradox: As companies scale, they optimize for predictability, standardization and risk mitigation. The result? Creativity gets squeezed out. Teams fall into what I call the “River of Thinking” — a comfortable but stagnant flow of “this is how we’ve always done it.” Leaders want bold new ideas, but their organizations are wired to resist them.

I’ve seen this firsthand in my work with companies like Disney and Virgin. The key to scaling creativity isn’t waiting for lightning to strike — it’s architecting the conditions for a thunderstorm of ideas. And that requires a fundamental shift in leadership: moving beyond efficiency-driven mindsets to deliberately designing cultures where innovation thrives.

You’ll discover the following ways to start in the full article on entrepreneur.com:

• Move beyond the status quo.
• Make ideas tangible.
• Empower teams to innovate boldly.
• Create the mental space for creativity.
• Balance imagination with execution.