Buckle Up for the Future: Five Uncomfortable Truths About Corporate Innovation

Insight by Katharina Neubert, January 03, 2026

In 1976, the German government told its drivers to buckle up, and then watched something very human unfold: nothing changed.

It took eight years, and the enforcement of fines, for seatbelts to become a habit. It wasn’t that people doubted the safety benefits; they saw it as an affront to their freedom. The news magazine DER SPIEGEL even questioned, “Should…the liberal state force its motoring citizens to survive?”

What then seemed like a valid philosophical debate sounds ludicrous today. But the seatbelt story reminds us that progress meets resistance before it becomes second nature. We are seeing that same dynamic play out again, this time with Artificial Intelligence.

We are at an inflection point. AI continues to advance quickly, reshaping how people discover, consume, and pay for information. As a result, corporate leaders are trying to do two incredibly difficult things at once: reinvent business for an AI-driven future while protecting today’s profit engine. This means untangling technical debt, building products for rapidly shifting expectations, and keeping the core business running—all at once.

Last September, Holtzbrinck launched the AI Hub in San Francisco to help navigate this shift. The Hub is a hands-on innovation space where bold ideas in science, education, and media will be tested and put into action. It will connect Holtzbrinck’s global network of researchers and publishers with Silicon Valley startups and technologists. As I have begun collaborating more closely with the Bay Area AI ecosystem, I’ve been asking founders and tech leaders a single question: Why is corporate innovation so hard, and what does it actually take to succeed?

What I’ve seen, and heard, points to five uncomfortable truths.

1. If You Don’t Plant Seeds, Don’t Expect a Harvest

U.S. software firms typically invest 15–20% of their revenue in Research & Development (R&D). By contrast, traditional media companies average around 1.5%. The New York Times, arguably the industry gold standard, spends roughly 10% of its total revenue on product development—putting it closer to tech giants like Spotify and Netflix than to its legacy peers.

If we don't ring-fence resources for tomorrow’s harvest, the chances of success aren't just low—they are nearly zero.

2. The Incentive Trap

Why do we so often optimize for today instead of tomorrow? Because there is no P&L line item for "missed opportunities." Innovation often stalls not because we lack ideas, but because we lack permission. We celebrate the products making money today and rarely talk about the revenue we'd have now if we'd taken podcasts or video more seriously earlier.

In conversations with former corporate executives who now run startups, I hear the same explanation again and again: incentives are often misaligned. If leaders are rewarded primarily for short-term profit performance, they have little reason—and no clear mandate—to trade current margins for long-term bets. So the real question isn't whether we have good ideas. It's whether we have permission to pursue them as relentlessly as we protect the core.

3. Obsession Over Ideation

I’ve had conversations with media leaders who wanted to start a venture but hesitated because they "didn't have an idea yet." In San Francisco, I’ve observed the approach to be slightly different. Founders rarely wait for a magical lightbulb moment. Instead, entrepreneurial domain experts obsess over a specific audience until they find a commercially significant problem worth solving. Only then do they start building while constantly validating and refining their solution with their target audience.

This is radical customer obsession. At a moment when AI is reshaping how people learn, research, and work, it’s a good time to pause and ask ourselves: Do we know what our customers actually want? Where they spend their time and money to learn, stay informed and entertained?

4. Protect the Core. Build the New. Don’t Confuse the Two.

One of the hardest questions for any legacy business is how to protect what works today while building what’s needed for tomorrow.

In practice, innovation often struggles when it’s forced into existing structures designed to optimize the core business. New ideas move at a different speed. They require different incentives, decision-making, and tolerance for uncertainty.

The organizations that make progress tend to do one thing well: they give breakthrough work enough independence to experiment, while keeping it closely connected to senior leadership. That balance helps the core business stay open to change, and keeps innovation grounded in real-world constraints. This setup is called the “Ambidextrous Organization”.

As AI creates pressure to both automate what exists and invent what doesn’t, a few questions feel more relevant than ever:

• Structure: Do our innovation teams have the freedom to work differently—or are we forcing the new into old processes?
• Alignment: Do our AI initiatives follow a clear strategic priority—or are we exploring in a vacuum?
  
• Leadership: Does senior leadership visibly champion innovation—or is it quietly delegated?
• Bridges: Are the core business and innovation teams actively learning from each other—or working past one another?
  
• Identity: Is innovation part of who we are—or a foreign body we tolerate?
  

5. Resistance is Human

Even when structure, strategy, and leadership are aligned—in the end, people have to change their behavior. That often feels slow, messy, and uncomfortable. It's deeply human. Neuroscience tells us we're wired to repeat what's familiar. Progress rarely comes in a single leap. It comes through many small repetitions, until one day it just feels normal.

Seatbelts didn't become a habit because people liked them. They became a habit because incentives, rules, and routines finally aligned. That didn't happen overnight.

My first ride in a self-driving Waymo felt like pure magic. I couldn't take my eyes off the turning steering wheel. By the third ride, I was scrolling through emails, completely forgetting there was no one in the driver's seat.

That's what innovation feels like. First impossible. Then scary. And then, suddenly, it's just a normal Tuesday. The future becomes routine faster than we think. Let's make sure we're buckled up—and steering.