Professional innovation is 90% structure, 10% spark. I learned that while helping build the innovation unit at SIX, one of Switzerland’s leading financial infrastructure providers. We had what most innovation leaders only dream of: budget, leadership support, a mandate to build the future. We set up specialist teams, ran experiments, and built processes to keep innovation moving. And still - the unit was shut down after just two years.

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That experience taught me something that matters even more for family businesses than for corporates: innovation can be designed well, run well… and still fail if you don’t protect it from the forces that kill it.

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Why This Story Matters for Family Businesses

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Family businesses often look to corporates for innovation inspiration. They borrow the tools - idea funnels, project teams, strategic foresight - but underestimate the political and cultural factors that will ultimately decide if those tools survive. In a corporate, those factors might be shareholder pressure or a leadership change. In a family business, they might be generational shifts, competing priorities between core and new ventures, or the weight of “how we’ve always done it.” The mechanics of failure are surprisingly similar.

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What We Got Right at SIX

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We didn’t just “support innovation.” We built a full-stack capability:

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• Open Innovation – Partnering with startups, universities, and outside talent
• Strategic Foresight – Scanning for long-term shifts and future scenarios
• Innovation Project Team – Testing concepts systematically
• Scaling Team – Turning validated ideas into business lines
• Marketing & Comms – Making the work visible inside and outside the company

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Each lane had an owner, KPIs tied to strategy, and the ability to operate outside the core while feeding insights back in. We made innovation a habit, not an event - with weekly updates, decision gates, and visible learning loops. On paper, it was the kind of model many family businesses could benefit from.

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Why It Still Failed

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Two years in, the innovation unit was gone. Not because it lacked results - but because context shifted faster than we could prove our value.

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Here’s what killed it:

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Leadership Changes Reset the Agenda

A new CEO brought a new vision. The unit wasn’t part of it. In family businesses, a generational handover can have the same effect - even if the work is going well.

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Short-Term Pressures Outweighed Long-Term Bets

Corporates answer to quarterly results; family businesses answer to cash flow and core stability. Either way, if innovation doesn’t produce visible wins fast enough, it’s seen as a cost centre.

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The Core Business Always Wins

Whenever the core needed resources, they were pulled from innovation. In a family firm, this can happen even more quickly because operational continuity is so personal.

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No Structural Anchor in Decision-Making

We could propose and pilot, but we had no guaranteed path to scale. Without direct integration into governance and budget authority, innovation always remained optional.

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The Lesson for Family Businesses

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It’s not enough to design a great innovation function. You have to embed it into the company’s power structure so it can survive leadership changes, market pressures, and the gravitational pull of the core business.

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That means:

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• Linking innovation to family and ownership vision, not just management goals
• Protecting it with dedicated funding and decision rights
• Making it visible - and relevant - to the wider business from day one
• Delivering quick, credible wins alongside long-term bets

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Because in a family business, innovation isn’t just competing with the market. It’s competing with the company’s own habits, history, and hierarchy.