The Cult of Methodology and the Reality of Innovation

While working recently on a new innovation process for a large global corporation, I was reminded of a kind of tribalism I hadn’t witnessed since the old Microsoft–Apple wars. Only this time, the battlefield wasn’t operating systems — it was methodology.

Teams lined up under banners reading Design Thinking, Lean UX, Agile — each with its own sacred texts and prophets. Change by Design, Lean UX, Living with Complexity were quoted like scripture. There were homelands (Stanford, MIT, Cupertino) and millions of loyal believers. Social feeds pulsed daily with revelations of how this or that framework could solve almost anything, if only you believed.

Meanwhile, in the real world, our task was to design a new enterprise innovation process — one that actually worked inside a complex corporate ecosystem.

So we borrowed widely. From Design Thinking came empathy and the “open mind.” From Lean UX, iteration and evidence. From Agile, responsiveness and pace. Then we adapted, combined, and reshaped them to fit the specific conditions of the organisation.

After two years of client discovery, it was clear they weren’t ready for any “pure” methodology. Their IT landscape was fragmented — multiple vendors, competing UX agencies, overlapping processes. What they needed wasn’t a revolution; it was a bridge.

We designed a process that met them where they were on their UX maturity journey — pragmatic, flexible, and human. It didn’t close any doors for the future. Instead, it guided them forward, hand-in-hand, towards capability and confidence. We coupled it with a clear service structure, training programme, and asset library that made the approach sustainable and their people self-sufficient.

As we worked, the battles around ideology flared up again — heated Teams debates over whether to start every project with a “beginner’s mind,” or to acknowledge existing assumptions and platform constraints. Each argument had merit. But as the discussion grew more abstract, it began to drift away from what mattered most: the client.

It’s easy to get caught up in the purity of the academic. It’s neat, elegant, and oddly comforting. The real world, by contrast, is messy. Vendors clash. Teams disagree. Systems break. Yet it’s in that complexity that design proves its worth.

The real test of any methodology is not how well it aligns with its doctrine — it’s how effectively it helps people make progress.

In the end, the best process isn’t Design Thinking or Lean UX or Agile. It’s the one that works — for the people, the culture, and the moment you find yourself in.