The Stagnation Assassin Show
Welcome to the world's most BRUTAL business transformation channel!
I'm Todd Hagopian, CEO of Stagnation Assassins and Executive Director of the Stagnation Intelligence Agency. Every week, I deliver fast-paced, in-your-face episodes that teach aspiring stagnation assassins how to DECLARE WAR ON STAGNATION!
WARNING: This channel contains:
⚔️ Uncomfortable truths about why your business is failing
💀 Strategic brutality that transforms companies
🔥 Zero tolerance for corporate mediocrity
💰 Profit-producing insights that your competitors don't want you to hear
Visit https://ToddHagopian.com for free content on slaying stagnation.
Visit https://StagnationAssassins.com (Coming soon) to join the revolution.
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The Stagnation Assassin Show
Innovation Labs Are Expensive Zoos: Why Your $10 Million Sandbox Is Producing Press Releases Instead of Products
Companies build gorgeous glass innovation labs, hire brilliant people, give them bean bags and ping-pong tables, and wonder why nothing transformative transfers to the actual business. These labs look like Silicon Valley startups trapped inside traditional companies—exotic animals in corporate cages.
The hilarious hypocrisy? These labs are designed to protect the core business from disruption, not transform it. It's like building a gym next to your house but never going inside. You can point to it and say, "Look, we care about fitness" while you get fatter every day.
The 90% Failure Rate
One financial services company spent $10 million on an innovation lab. Three years later: dozens of prototypes, several awards, great PR—and exactly nothing implemented. The lab became a tourist destination for executives to show off to board members while core operations remained frozen in 1995.
Research reveals about 90% of corporate innovation labs fail to generate significant value. That's not strategy—that's expensive theater.
The best ideas that threaten existing business models get killed faster than creativity at a compliance convention. One telecom's innovation lab developed a breakthrough service that would cannibalize traditional revenue. Result? Buried.
What You'll Learn in This Episode
Todd Hagopian reveals Embedded Innovation Architecture—putting breakthrough thinking where work happens, not in separate sandboxes. One manufacturing company killed their lab and gave that budget to production. Result: 40% defect reduction, 25% productivity improvement in one year.
You'll discover Constraint-Based Innovation. One logistics company challenged their warehouse team to improve efficiency with zero new technology and zero budget. They increased throughput 35% using nothing but ingenuity.
You'll learn Innovation Through Subtraction. One company eliminated their 47-step approval process. Innovations that took months happened in days—more breakthroughs in six months than their lab produced in three years.
Your Assignment
If you have an innovation lab, calculate its true ROI—not patents, but implemented value. If you don't, identify three innovation barriers in your core operations and eliminate them this week.
Visit http://stagnationassassins.com and Declare WAR on Stagnation.
About The Podcaster
Todd Hagopian has led five corporate transformations generating $2B+ in shareholder value. Author of The Unfair Advantage (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FV6QMWBX). Featured 30+ times on Forbes.com, Fox Business, and NPR.