The crowd gazes in silence as the sound of drums beat to the echoes of your pounding heart. Before you stands an imposing sumo (rikishi) who shows no sign of mercy. It’s a match for the ages, and you’re the underdog. 

The rules? Don’t step outside the ring (dohyo) and don’t let any part of your body other than your feet touch the ground. The challenge? Engage the crowd, build up momentum, and push your way to victory! 

Stand Your Ground

Building innovative systems is like sumo wrestling in more ways than one. For starters, ask any seasoned innovator and they’ll tell you that developing a world-class innovation program requires some serious heavy lifting. This is no surprise and if anything, is to be expected. This is partly because innovation is a menace to the status quo, and change skeptics, of which there are many, have a natural propensity toward routines, bureaucracies, and fixed processes. Even today, with all the data and technological resources at their disposal, organizations still succumb to the perils of disruptions, new regulations, and unavoidable future evolutions. So what exactly is going on? Well, imagine yourself in a dohyo, and you have to push a sumo. For many, that’s what it feels like to push for innovative systems. Overcoming resistance to organizational transformation is no walk in the park by any means, but it’s not impossible either. Like many have done before you, let the vision of change pull you into the ring. 

We all know structure is top-down, but we tend to forget how creativity is bottom-up, and that’s precisely wherein lies the key to modern-day business resilience. In the same way that sumo wrestling is Japan’s national sport, innovation is an enterprise-wide cultural phenomenon that eventually weaves itself into the bulk of your business strategies regarding culture, processes, and systems — involving everyone at every level across all business units of the organization. That’s a lot of brainpower, and cognitive diversity carries a lot of weight.

It’s no secret that unlocking new business value repeatedly is the result of combining creativity and collaboration. As an innovator, this is your biggest challenge though. When it comes to purpose-driven innovation, engaging a crowd is no easy feat, and maintaining momentum once the show begins is just as challenging, if not more so. But remember: sumos don’t wait around to be tossed out of the ring — they push back.

In innovation as in wrestling, push backs are an intrinsic response to resistance. How you’ll overcome depends on your ability to adapt to the fluctuating dynamics of the fight. Like a sumo, you must stand your ground and let your girthy abdomen absorb the shock of every shove, poke, and nudge. This situation may seem overwhelming at first, but a simple shift in perspective can stack the odds in your favor: look at it as an opportunity to get a better understanding of the challenges you face, as well as a better feel for your innovation community. It requires a lot of trial and error, but one thing is certain: the winning sumo will strike a balance between proactive and reactive change management — and that sumo is you.

Bring Out the Big Guns

Behind every great innovation program is an equally great innovation champion. The crowd yearns to cocreate unique and valuable solutions for the betterment of your organization and its community, yet you still can’t get the sumo rolling. Momentum is in limbo as you find yourself inching closer and closer to defeat. Exhaustion ensues, and worse still, the fear of failure begins to set in. Your coach wants results; your community, a leader. In this case, a can-do attitude can go a long way: similar to the ripple effect observed in a sumo’s bulging waistline, innovation triggers a positive ripple effect on your organization’s culture — but that alone isn’t enough. Fostering a collaborative culture requires structural support. Without the right tools, all your hard-fought efforts will have been mere hoopla. What you need then is a weapon, and luckily for you, this falls squarely within the rules of engagement.

There’s only so much shock a sumo’s belly can absorb and at some point you’ll need to bring out the big guns to propel the culture change you seek. When push comes to shove in wrestling, sumos rely on their opponents’ belts (mawashi) to lift them off the ground. Similarly, when push comes to shove in innovation management, leaders use collaborative innovation software to lift their program to the next level. Ad hoc initiatives can only take you so far, and without a platform specifically designed to bring purpose, focus, and structure to collaboration, your efforts will eventually tail off and amount to nothing more than a backlog of dust-ridden ideas. The crowd wants action and as the frontrunner, you owe them that much. Finish what you started and then do it all over again in the next round. Innovation is more than idea management in the same way that a sumo’s mawashi is more than a belt. In the right hands, you can lift your program out of the doldrums like a rikishi can lift his opponent out of the dohyo.

You now have the winning edge and the crowd is cheering you on. Things are finally starting to pick up, and quite literally, too. With an innovation management platform, there are a plethora of activities you can launch (like challenges, shark tanks, jams, hackathons, etc.) and a range of features you can leverage (like gamification, rewards and recognition, integrations, etc.) to maintain momentum and drive engagement, respectively. All of your hard work has culminated to this moment where innovation is now scaled and sustainable, and your organization is in a position to write its own destiny and shape the future it desires. Victory is just a sumo’s throw away — just remember to wear a mawashi for the next fight so you don’t scare the crowd away.


Lucas Potasso-Justino

Chief Editor for the Future-Fit Manifesto. I Inspire people to push beyond their limitations to bring about the organizational change they desire and deserve. Follow me on LinkedIn.