Good innovation doesn’t happen in isolation. It happens when you trust the people doing the work to find better ways to do it. This fundamental principle, championed by Julie Averill, former EVP and Global Chief Information Officer of lululemon, offers a potent counterpoint to the prevailing corporate impulse to silo innovation into dedicated teams. Averill’s tenure at lululemon, a period marked by a remarkable technological transformation that propelled the company’s revenue from $2 billion to over $10 billion, provides a compelling case study. Her insights, recently adapted from her book "Chief Impact Officer," challenge conventional wisdom and highlight the critical role of empowering operational teams in fostering genuine, sustainable innovation.
The Conventional Approach: Siloed Innovation and Its Pitfalls
As lululemon experienced exponential growth, the pressure to innovate intensified. The demand for new capabilities, market expansion, and enhanced guest experiences became a constant, relentless force. In response to this escalating need, the conventional wisdom suggested a familiar path: establish a dedicated innovation team. This team would operate separately from the day-to-day pressures of production systems, provided with the space and freedom to explore emerging technologies without the immediate constraints of operational demands.
This approach, widely adopted across industries, aims to shield nascent ideas from the rigors of immediate commercialization and operational integration. The theory posits that by removing the immediate pressures of quarterly delivery targets and operational responsibilities, a core group of individuals can dedicate their focus to "pure innovation," unburdened by the immediate needs of the business.
However, Averill’s experience at lululemon revealed a significant flaw in this model. Within months of implementing a separate innovation team, the intended benefits began to unravel. The innovations developed by this specialized group often proved difficult to integrate into the existing operational frameworks. This disconnect stemmed from the operational teams’ lack of involvement in the development process, leading to a sense of detachment and resistance. Conversely, the innovation team found their promising concepts sometimes addressing problems that the business had already deprioritized for valid strategic reasons, leading to a feeling of their work being dismissed.
The outcome was a growing chasm between innovation and operations. The operational teams perceived innovation as something being done to them, rather than with them. This created a dynamic where the very people responsible for executing business functions felt alienated from the forward-looking initiatives. The innovation team, in turn, felt their efforts were not translating into tangible business impact, leading to frustration and a potential erosion of morale.
Reimagining Innovation: Empowering the Frontline
Averill’s realization was profound: the perceived gap in innovation was not a deficit of creative thinking within the operational ranks, but rather a consequence of their environment. She observed that the individuals managing daily operations were not inherently less innovative; they were simply overwhelmed by operational pressures, lacking the permission and the structured space to lift their heads and explore alternative solutions.
This led to a pivotal decision: the disbandment of the separate innovation team. Instead of creating an isolated engine of innovation, lululemon shifted its focus inward, seeking to cultivate innovation within its existing structures. The fundamental belief was that the most impactful innovations would emerge not from a detached elite, but from individuals deeply immersed in the daily challenges and opportunities of the business.
The first step in this strategic pivot involved a significant overhaul of the hiring process. The interview questions were redesigned to probe beyond technical skills and experience. The focus shifted to identifying inherent qualities such as curiosity, a sense of ownership, a collaborative spirit, and a constructive approach to conflict. Candidates were asked to reveal their natural inclination to identify problems and proactively conceptualize solutions. Crucially, questions were posed to understand how they engaged with individuals who held different perspectives, aiming to identify those who could bridge divides and foster collective problem-solving.
Averill articulated this shift with the potent observation: "Because if you hire curious problem-solvers and then bury them in process without space to think, you’ve wasted what made them valuable in the first place." This principle underscored the new philosophy: identifying individuals with the innate capacity for innovation was only the first half of the equation. The other, more critical half, was creating an environment that nurtured and enabled that capacity.
Cultivating a Culture of Ownership and Experimentation
What truly unlocked innovation at lululemon, according to Averill, was not a complex framework or a dedicated department, but rather the cultivation of conditions where employees felt safe and empowered to experiment. This required a deliberate and consistent effort to foster a sense of ownership over problems, which in turn naturally led to innovation in their solutions.
Key to this cultural shift was the proactive protection of time for exploration. This meant acknowledging that innovation is not solely a byproduct of urgent tasks but requires dedicated space. It also involved a conscious effort to celebrate smart failures as loudly as successes. This created a psychological safety net, encouraging individuals to take calculated risks without the fear of severe repercussions for initiatives that did not yield immediate positive results.
The impact of this approach was tangible. When an employee proposed a novel idea, such as "What if we tried this completely different approach?", the response shifted from the often-encountered "That’s not how we do things" to an encouraging "Let’s test it." This simple but profound change in response signaled a fundamental shift in organizational mindset, moving from a culture of resistance to one of enablement.
The breakthrough ideas that emerged were not the product of a centralized innovation lab. Instead, they surfaced organically from individuals on the ground. Consider the engineer who, after two years of managing the deployment process, was finally empowered to reimagine it entirely. Or the product manager, possessing intimate knowledge of lululemon’s guests, who was trusted to experiment with unconventional strategies. Or the data scientist who, by embedding themselves with business teams, gained a deep understanding of the actual problems requiring solutions. These were instances where individuals, deeply familiar with the operational realities, were given the agency to innovate.
Averill emphasized that "When people own the problem, they innovate on the solution. You can’t hand someone else’s brilliant idea to a team and expect the same commitment you get when they discover it themselves." This highlights the intrinsic motivation that arises from genuine problem ownership. It’s the difference between being assigned a task and feeling a personal stake in its successful resolution and improvement.
Consequently, innovation ceased to be a discrete function relegated to a specific department. It transformed into an emergent property of the organization, a natural outcome of empowering curious individuals with trust, time, and the permission to approach challenges from new angles.
The AI Parallel: Avoiding Past Mistakes
Averill’s insights carry particular relevance in the current landscape of rapid technological advancement, especially with the rise of Artificial Intelligence (AI). She observes a worrying trend of companies repeating the same mistakes by creating "AI Centers of Excellence" that are isolated from operational realities. These centers are often staffed by specialists, perpetuating the siloed approach that proved ineffective in the past.
Averill argues that AI is not a domain for specialists to tinker with while the rest of the business continues as usual. Instead, AI should be viewed as a powerful tool that curious problem-solvers, embedded within operational teams, can leverage. The crucial element is providing these individuals with the space and support to ask the fundamental question: "Could this tool help me solve this problem better?"
This perspective shifts the focus from a top-down implementation of AI technology to a bottom-up integration driven by genuine business needs. Companies that will ultimately succeed in leveraging AI are not necessarily those with the most sophisticated AI labs, but rather those that prioritize hiring inquisitive individuals, cultivate robust trust within their teams, and grant them the autonomy to reimagine how work gets done using these new tools.
The Enduring Principle of Empowered Innovation
The narrative from lululemon, as articulated by Julie Averill, offers a powerful blueprint for fostering innovation in any organization. It underscores a timeless truth: the most effective innovation is not a solitary pursuit but a collective endeavor fueled by trust and empowerment. By investing in curious minds and creating an environment where they feel secure to explore, experiment, and even fail intelligently, companies can unlock a potent and sustainable source of progress.
The implications of this approach are far-reaching. For businesses struggling to adapt to rapidly evolving markets, it suggests a recalibration of strategy away from rigid, hierarchical structures towards more agile, distributed models of innovation. For employees, it promises a more engaging and fulfilling work experience, where their ingenuity is not only recognized but actively encouraged and supported.
Ultimately, the success of lululemon’s technological transformation, growing from $2 billion to over $10 billion in revenue, serves as a compelling testament to the power of this philosophy. It demonstrates that good innovation doesn’t occur in a vacuum. It flourishes when individuals on the front lines, who understand the challenges and opportunities most intimately, are trusted and empowered to chart a course toward better ways of working. This foundational principle, when embraced, can redefine an organization’s capacity for growth and its ability to thrive in an increasingly dynamic global landscape.
Adapted from Chief Impact Officer, published by 8080 Books. Copyright © 2026. All rights reserved.
