Why Innovation Fails: The Hidden Identity Cost of Change
Federico Malatesta, executive coach, argues that innovation rarely fails on ideas or execution. It fails on identity.
With Federico Malatesta
From The Corporate Venturing Podcast, brought to you by Open Road Ventures
4 things this conversation gets into
- 01Why the brain is wired to resist innovation
- 02Narrative antibodies, and how organisations kill new ventures
- 03The political and reputational risk of sponsoring something new
- 04Coaching leaders through an identity transition, not just a strategy change
Federico Malatesta is an executive transformational coach and author who works at the intersection of leadership, identity and organisational change. He helps senior leaders navigate moments when the old story no longer works and a new one is trying to emerge.
Davide Ritorto is a management engineer from Italy with an international MBA, currently working at Lamborghini. He is what some call an intrapreneur, passionate about open innovation and corporate venturing, and driven by curiosity about how things work and how to make them work even better. Through Open Road Ventures he sets out to inspire and inform other innovators, intrapreneurs and dreamers.
He founded Open Road Ventures as a weekly publication on open innovation and corporate venturing, and The Corporate Venturing Podcast grew out of it. He also mentors startups at Motor Valley Accelerator and sits on the Open Innovation Advisory Board at UC Berkeley Haas.
The Corporate Venturing Podcast is made by Open Road Ventures. The Bundl Venture Club is a partner of the show.
Read the full show notes
In this episode, I’m joined by Federico Malatesta, executive transformational coach and author, who works at the intersection of leadership, identity, and organizational change. Federico helps senior leaders navigate moments when the old story no longer works — and a new one is trying to emerge.
This is not an episode about CVC, venture building frameworks, or innovation toolkits.
It’s about the uncomfortable reason why innovation and transformation fail even when the strategy is sound: leaders underestimate the identity cost of change.
We explore innovation not as a portfolio problem, but as a psychological, political, and narrative one — and why new ventures often trigger resistance deep inside the organization long before they fail in the market.
Together, we strip innovation down to its human core: how the brain resists novelty, how companies operate on implicit stories, and why middle management becomes the immune system that attacks anything that threatens the status quo.
In this episode, Federico shares insights on:
🧠 Why the brain is wired to resist innovation
🧩 Innovation as identity transformation, not an additive initiative
🧬 “Narrative antibodies” and how organizations kill new ventures
🏛️ The hidden political and reputation risks leaders face when sponsoring innovation
📉 Why innovation doesn’t fail on ideas or execution — but on identity
🧭 Coaching leaders through identity transition, not just strategy change
We close the episode by reframing innovation leadership as contextual intelligence — the ability to read shifting power, incentives, and stories — and why storytelling without operational clarity is one of the fastest ways to lose credibility inside a large organization.
Resources:
• Open Road Ventures Newsletter
🎧 Follow the podcast for grounded conversations on what actually shapes innovation and corporate venturing — beyond the frameworks, beyond the hype.
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