Most of us carry a picture in our heads of what it looks like to support innovation.
We imagine tools.
Coaching.
Slide decks and strategy maps and logic models.
Convenings, trainings, and technical assistance.
That work matters.
It helps.
And it’s often essential.
But it’s rarely sufficient on its own.
Across the lifecycle of an idea — at its beginning, its middle, and even after it has found wild success — innovators encounter moments where clarity recedes rather than advances. Assumptions get tested. Context shifts. What once seemed obvious no longer fits.
What innovators remember are the moments when they can name that uncertainty without being rushed past it. When a sketch that doesn’t resolve still moves the work forward. When there’s room to re-examine the question before refining the answer.
That kind of support is harder to name.
It’s quieter. Messier. And it doesn’t show up neatly in scopes of work.
In community-based and social innovation work especially, progress is rarely linear. Ideas don’t simply move from concept to execution; they cycle through discovery, doubt, refinement, and realignment. Supporting that work well requires more than tools and process. It requires posture.
One way this shows up in our context is through intentional investment in infrastructure that can do two things at once: provide structured support when needed, and hold space when ideas need to be reconsidered, reshaped, or slowed down.
The Office for Community Child Health is one such container. Within it, the Childhood Prosperity Lab offers structured approaches to innovation — Human-Centered Design, communities of practice, technical assistance — tools that help ideas take form and move toward action.
That work is important.
But at multiple points along the way, innovators need something else as well. They need room to pause. To surface tensions that have emerged. To ask whether the work is still answering the right question.
In those moments, what’s needed isn’t another framework. It’s the ability to stay with complexity. To resist premature resolution. To work alongside someone who can help interrogate the idea without destabilizing it.
There’s a difference between helping people execute an idea well and helping them stay oriented as the idea evolves.
We need both.
So, these are the questions worth holding throughout the work:
Where do we make space to revisit assumptions as conditions change?
Where do we allow people to say “This isn’t working the way we thought” without penalty?
And where do we recognize that presence may be the most consequential support we offer?
Innovation doesn’t live in a single moment or a single model.
It lives in judgment, trust, and restraint over time.
And sometimes, the most important move is creating space and community, where an innovator can become clearer about what they’re actually trying to do.