From Invention to Adoption: Building the human infrastructure for innovation in the AI era

As artificial intelligence accelerates the creation of new capabilities, many large organizations continue to struggle with a more fundamental challenge: turning invention into adopted practice. This article argues that, today, innovation increasingly depends not only on technology, experimentation, or executive sponsorship, but also on the human and organizational capacity to absorb new ways of working.

Drawing on Peter Denning’s research distinguishing invention from innovation, interviews with more than two dozen SAP leaders, faculty members, and graduates, and direct observation of the SAP Institute for Product and Engineering, the article examines how organizations can build this capacity deliberately. The SAP story highlights the importance of community, psychological safety, vulnerability, reflection, cross-boundary conversation, and opportunities to practice new behaviors before applying them under everyday organizational pressures.

The article explains that, in the AI era, adoption is becoming a scarcer resource than invention. It offers leaders a practical way to diagnose where innovation is breaking down, along with best practices for treating adoption as a form of human infrastructure that must be intentionally developed, supported, and sustained, thereby increasing its success.