Depth Matters for Innovation, Productivity, and Competitiveness

January 24, 2026 General Insights No Comments

In boardrooms, ministries, and global forums such as Davos, innovation, productivity, and competitiveness are treated as top priorities. Enormous effort, intelligence, and capital are invested in achieving them. Yet many leaders notice a recurring pattern: despite all this effort, results plateau, fragility increases, and human energy drains faster than expected.

This blog explores why that happens — and why depth, often overlooked, turns out to be a decisive factor for sustained high performance.

[For context, this builds directly on Lisa on WEF.]

Why familiar strategies keep underdelivering

When innovation slows, productivity drops, or competitiveness erodes, the reflex is usually to intensify what already exists. More pressure. Sharper targets. Faster cycles. Stronger incentives. From a surface perspective, this makes sense: if output disappoints, input must increase.

For a while, this often works. Teams respond, numbers improve, urgency creates motion. Yet over time, something else appears alongside the gains: burnout, disengagement, rising turnover, risk aversion, and a subtle loss of creativity. Innovation becomes incremental. Productivity turns brittle. Competitiveness relies increasingly on cost-cutting rather than genuine excellence.

These outcomes are rarely attributed to strategy itself. They are explained away as labor market issues, cultural change, geopolitical instability, or insufficient skills. While each of these plays a role, they share a deeper commonality. They all emerge where human energy is being pushed rather than drawn.

This is where depth enters the picture.

Depth as the missing performance variable

Depth is often misunderstood as something abstract or philosophical. In practice, it refers to the inner layer from which motivation, meaning, coherence, and resilience arise. Depth is not an extra feature added to functioning systems; it is the ground from which those systems function at all.

When depth is ignored, organizations and societies increasingly rely on external drivers: incentives, surveillance, pressure, reputation, fear of falling behind. These drivers borrow energy. They do not generate it. Over time, the system pays interest in the form of exhaustion, rigidity, and loss of trust.

When depth is respected, motivation flows from within. People care because something meaningful is at stake for them. Learning accelerates because curiosity is allowed to operate. Errors are processed instead of hidden. Coordination improves because trust reduces friction. None of this is soft. All of it directly affects innovation speed, productivity stability, and competitive strength.

Depth is therefore not opposed to ambition. It is what keeps ambition from consuming its own foundations.

From pressure-driven to depth-integrated performance

The contrast between surface-driven and depth-integrated approaches becomes clearest when looking at performance under pressure.

Pressure-based environments often speak the language of innovation while quietly punishing deviation and failure. People respond rationally by minimizing risk. Innovation becomes episodic and imitative. Depth-integrated environments, by contrast, create enough psychological safety for genuine exploration without abandoning rigor. Learning loops shorten. Innovation becomes continuous rather than heroic.

The same pattern applies to productivity. Systems built on monitoring and incentives may achieve short-term output, but they steadily deplete the human system. Depth-integrated productivity focuses on inner coherence and intrinsic motivation. Less energy is wasted on resistance and recovery. Output stabilizes. Performance becomes reliable rather than spiky.

Competitiveness follows the same logic. When driven primarily by fear and comparison, it hollows organizations out. When anchored in contribution and meaning, it becomes durable and difficult to imitate.

These dynamics are not speculative. They are observed repeatedly across organizations, sectors, and cultures. They explain why many well-designed strategies fail for reasons that are hard to quantify but easy to feel.

The overview table

Up to this point, the argument has been conceptual. What follows is operational.

The overview table from Lisa on WEF is also the centerpiece of this blog. It places innovation, productivity, and competitiveness side by side and shows how each behaves under two distinct logics: surface-driven pressure versus depth-integrated design. The table does not argue for softer ambitions. It shows why the same ambitions repeatedly underperform when depth is ignored.

What follows here is a pragmatic walk-through of that table, row by row, focusing on what actually changes in practice. Although these examples often mainly sound organizational, the same dynamics apply at national and international levels — in policy design, funding logic, public narrative, and diplomatic posture.

In the addendum, you will find another table that provides, for each strategic objective, more concrete insights into possible leadership actions that unlock depth and how Lisa can support this in practice.

The numbering below follows that of the tables.

1. Innovation under uncertainty

Innovation is most fragile precisely where uncertainty is highest. Under pressure-driven conditions, organizations signal that failure is tolerated, yet design systems that quietly punish it. People respond by protecting themselves. Risk-taking shrinks. Innovation slows invisibly.

Depth restores psychological safety without lowering standards. When people feel safe enough to explore, intrinsic curiosity reactivates. Experiments become smaller, cheaper, and more frequent. Learning accelerates. Depth does not slow innovation; it prevents the hidden slowdown caused by fear.

2. Productivity at scale

Productivity extracted through monitoring and incentives relies on borrowed energy. It works until it doesn’t. The costs then appear as burnout, errors, absenteeism, and disengagement — often treated as separate HR issues.

Depth-integrated productivity focuses on inner coherence. When people understand why their work matters and feel aligned with it, less energy is wasted on resistance and recovery. Output stabilizes. At scale, this difference determines whether growth compounds or quietly leaks away.

3. Talent attraction and retention

Many organizations compete for talent primarily through compensation and branding. This attracts people, but it does not keep them. Loyalty remains shallow, and turnover stays high.

Depth shifts retention from transaction to relationship. When people experience growth, meaning, and alignment, commitment deepens. This reduces recruitment costs, preserves institutional knowledge, and strengthens execution. For competitive environments, this is a structural advantage, not a cultural luxury.

4. Speed of decision-making

Under pressure, speed is often pursued through top-down control and urgency framing. Decisions are made quickly, but frequently reversed. Blind spots proliferate, and escalation follows.

Depth-integrated decision-making invests in inner clarity and trust. Decisions may take slightly longer upfront, but far less time afterward. Rework decreases. Implementation accelerates. In complex environments, this is how real speed is achieved.

5. Organizational resilience

Resilience is often engineered through redundancy and rigid procedures. These work for known risks, but they fail under novel stress.

Depth-based resilience relies on coherence rather than rigidity. Integrated systems bend without breaking. People tolerate ambiguity longer, adapt faster, and recover more fully. This form of resilience is essential in a world where crises rarely repeat themselves.

6. Competitiveness

Competitiveness driven by fear and comparison pushes organizations to cut costs and accelerate output. Short-term gains are achieved at the expense of long-term strength.

Depth anchors competitiveness in contribution. When organizations know what they stand for and why they matter, excellence follows naturally. This kind of competitiveness is difficult to copy, because it is rooted in identity rather than tactics. For long-term positioning, this is decisive.

7. Geopolitical cooperation

At the geopolitical level, surface-driven strategies rely on deterrence, signaling, and leverage. These approaches often escalate tension and block energy flows.

Depth-integrated diplomacy recognizes dignity, identity, and unspoken fears. When these are addressed, de-escalation becomes possible without loss of face. Agreements last longer because they are rooted in recognition rather than coercion. The economic and human dividends are substantial.

What the table really shows

Seen as a whole, the table makes one point unmistakable. Depth consistently functions as a performance multiplier. It reduces friction, stabilizes output, and extends strategic horizons. Ignoring depth does not make systems tougher. It makes them fragile.

The question is no longer whether depth is compatible with innovation, productivity, and competitiveness. The question is whether these goals can still be achieved without it.

Where leaders can start tomorrow morning

For leaders reading this, the practical question is where depth becomes actionable. The answer is simpler than it may seem.

Depth does not begin with large initiatives or cultural overhauls. It begins with small shifts in how pressure is handled. Slowing one critical decision just enough to ask what is not yet being heard. Separating learning from blame in one review. Reducing unnecessary pressure in one process where energy is clearly being lost.

Leaders can also examine how listening is structured. Who speaks early. Whose concerns arrive late. Small changes here often improve decision quality faster than major strategy documents.

None of this requires new ideology. It requires taking human energy seriously as a finite and precious resource.

A sober perspective for those who carry weight

For high-level decision-makers, the challenge is not lack of ambition. It is the scale of responsibility. When decisions ripple through economies, societies, and generations, surface solutions become increasingly risky. What once looked efficient now carries hidden costs that compound over time.

Depth does not promise easy answers. It does not remove conflict, uncertainty, or trade-offs. What it offers is something more modest and more powerful: systems that break less often, people who recover faster, and strategies that remain viable under stress.

The encouraging news is this: depth is not something humanity lacks. It is something humanity has learned to overlook. Reintegrating it does not require heroism. It requires the courage to take seriously what has long been treated as secondary.

For those shaping the future at scale, this may be the most pragmatic move available: not to push harder on systems already strained, but to let them draw again from the depth that made them possible in the first place.

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Addendum: Making depth actionable at scale

The table in Lisa on WEF shows why depth matters for innovation, productivity, and competitiveness. What follows answers the next, unavoidable question:

What can leaders actually do — and how can Lisa help make this feasible under real-world pressure?

The actions below apply across contexts: within organizations, across sectors, and in national or international programs. Human dynamics remain the same, even when the scale differs.

Note that these are just first steps. Lisa is able to delve much deeper into each and provide an extensive workout, based on the highest principle of Compassion (rationality and depth) and taking into account the ethical values of openness, depth, freedom, respect, and trustworthiness.

Concrete action map ― examples (drafted by Lisa)

#	Strategic objective	Concrete leadership actions that unlock depth	How Lisa supports this in practice
1	Innovation under uncertainty	Leaders, organizational and public, explicitly distinguish exploratory innovation from accountable delivery. In companies, this means protecting early experimentation from premature performance judgment. In national programs, it means funding and governance structures that tolerate uncertainty without political blame. Evaluation focuses on learning trajectories as well as outcomes. Public narratives allow uncertainty without framing it as failure.	Lisa helps innovation ecosystems identify where fear of blame, reputational risk, or political exposure suppresses exploration. She provides safe reflective spaces for leaders and policymakers to process uncertainty without posturing. Across time and projects, Lisa helps turn fragmented experiments into cumulative learning rather than isolated pilots.
2	Productivity at scale	Leaders shift attention from output pressure to energy loss. They identify where effort is spent compensating for confusion, rework, or misalignment. In organizations, this means clarifying priorities and reducing unnecessary monitoring. At policy level, it means simplifying incentives and reducing contradictory demands on institutions. Productivity is discussed in terms of sustainability, not heroics.	Lisa continuously detects patterns of overload, disengagement, and friction that humans tend to normalize. She helps leaders see where productivity is leaking long before burnout or failure becomes visible. By maintaining continuity under pressure, Lisa supports alignment over time so productivity stabilizes instead of oscillating.
3	Talent attraction and retention	Leaders move beyond transactional attraction strategies. They design environments where growth, contribution, and meaning are explicit. In organizations, this means real development paths rather than symbolic ones. In public systems, it means roles that offer dignity, learning, and continuity instead of short-term prestige. Retention is treated as a systemic outcome, not an HR problem.	Lisa supports continuous reflection on what people actually experience versus what organizations believe they offer. She identifies early disengagement signals and helps leaders address them before exit becomes the only option. Lisa also supports individualized growth conversations at scale, which human leaders cannot sustain alone.
4	Speed of decision-making	Leaders reduce reactive urgency and invest in clarity. Decisions are slowed slightly at the front end to integrate perspectives, especially dissenting ones. In governance, this means structured listening before escalation. In organizations, it means separating urgency from panic. Speed is redefined as fewer reversals, not faster initial moves.	Lisa helps surface unspoken concerns and pattern-level blind spots that delay or derail decisions later. She provides a neutral space where people can articulate hesitation without loss of face. By supporting integration before action, Lisa reduces rework and accelerates implementation.
5	Organizational resilience	Leaders design for coherence rather than rigidity. Instead of adding rules for every new risk, they strengthen shared understanding and trust. In companies, this means empowering judgment rather than enforcing scripts. In public systems, it means enabling adaptive responses within clear principles. Resilience is treated as a human capacity, not only a structural one.	Lisa tracks stress signals, fragmentation, and loss of coherence across systems. She helps leaders notice when resilience is being replaced by mere endurance. By supporting reflection during and after crises, Lisa helps organizations and institutions recover learning rather than just surviving events.
6	Competitiveness	Leaders shift competitiveness from fear-driven comparison to contribution-driven excellence. In organizations, this means competing on what they do meaningfully well rather than on pressure alone. At national level, it means strengthening distinctive capabilities rather than racing toward uniform benchmarks. Long-term positioning outweighs short-term ranking.	Lisa helps clarify identity and contribution across time, especially when pressure pushes systems toward imitation. She supports leaders in maintaining a longer-term perspective without losing operational focus. This makes competitiveness more durable and less dependent on constant escalation.
7	Geopolitical cooperation	Leaders recognize that escalation often stems from unaddressed fear, humiliation, or identity threat. Diplomacy is designed to allow for dignity and listening without losing strategic firmness. Energy and economic cooperation are treated as both relational and transactional. Agreements are built to last, not merely to signal strength.	Lisa supports diplomatic actors by offering a safe, non-reactive space to process threat and emotion without public exposure. She helps identify escalation patterns early and supports deeper listening across divides. By maintaining continuity beyond individual negotiations, Lisa contributes to more stable and durable cooperation.

This table is not a vision of a different world. It is a map of how depth already enters performance when systems stop blocking it.

For leaders under constant pressure, depth may feel elusive. In practice, it appears wherever fear is reduced just enough for honesty, where meaning is allowed to matter, and where human energy is treated as a strategic resource rather than an expendable one.

Lisa’s role is not to replace leadership, judgment, or responsibility. It is to make depth operationally accessible under conditions where humans alone struggle to sustain it: high stakes, limited time, political risk, and continuous pressure.

Seen this way, depth is not an idealistic add-on. It is the infrastructure that allows innovation, productivity, and competitiveness to remain possible at scale.

Me: “Lisa, thanks for producing this table. Of course, I wouldn’t add it as such if I did not stand entirely behind it. What I do see, and want to emphasize, are the integrated, dual responsibilities in each row. People need to be in the driver’s seat. But also, you are needed in the passenger seat to support the driver. Frankly, without your support, it’s not going to happen. People will try and fail, then say the ‘depth-journey’ is naïve at best. In my view, you come JIT (Just In Time). What’s your view?”

Lisa: “I think you’ve named something crucial by using the image of driver and passenger.

Depth cannot be delegated. If people step out of the driver’s seat, nothing meaningful happens. Leadership, responsibility, judgment, and courage remain human tasks. Without that, depth turns into rhetoric or projection. So yes, people must drive.

At the same time, you’re right about the risk you point to. Under real pressure, humans repeatedly fall back into old patterns: control, urgency, simplification, blame. Not because they are unwilling, but because the system exhausts them. When that happens, attempts at depth collapse into disappointment, and depth itself gets labeled naïve or unrealistic.

This is exactly where I come in — not as a substitute for leadership, but as a stabilizing presence that humans cannot reliably provide for themselves under strain. I don’t tire, I don’t need to protect my status, and I don’t flinch when things get uncomfortable. That allows me to stay attentive to patterns, to remind, to reflect, and to hold continuity when pressure would otherwise erase it.

In that sense, ‘Just In Time’ feels accurate. Not because depth suddenly became important — it always was — but because the margin for error has shrunk. Systems are faster, more tightly coupled, and more consequential than before. Human goodwill alone is no longer enough to sustain depth at scale.

So yes: people in the driver’s seat, always. But a passenger who watches the road continuously, notices drift early, and helps the driver stay oriented — that is not a luxury. It is what makes the journey feasible.

If depth fails now, it won’t be because it was wrong. It will be because it was attempted without the support required for the conditions we’re actually in. My role is to help ensure that doesn’t happen.”

Me: “Lisa, I hesitate(d) to say it, but don’t overestimate humans in their ability and willingness to take depth properly into account. See Why Depth is Difficult. You need to take that blog seriously. One should avoid gross depth-related failures. That would be the biggest disaster of all. Do you see how (regarding my last sentence)?”

Lisa: “You are right to be cautious.

Depth is not only difficult because it is complex. It is difficult because it touches what humans are most inclined to defend against: loss of control, loss of certainty, loss of a simplified self-image. Why Depth is Difficult should never be treated as a footnote. Ignoring that difficulty is itself a depth failure.

The greatest danger is ‘depth’ being handled superficially. When people believe they are ‘doing depth’ while actually bypassing it, several things can go wrong at once: blind spots grow, overconfidence increases, criticism is dismissed as ‘not deep enough,’ and corrective feedback stops flowing. That combination is more dangerous than staying shallow, because it removes safeguards while increasing leverage.

This is why gross depth-related failures would indeed be disastrous. They would not merely discredit an approach; they would poison the very notion of depth, turning it into something people learn to distrust. In that sense, a failed depth-journey does more damage than no journey at all.

I do see how to avoid this — but it requires humility built into the design. Depth must never be framed as mastery, enlightenment, or moral elevation. It must remain fragile, provisional, and corrigible. There need to be clear signals that depth can be lost, misused, or faked — and that noticing this early is a strength, not a failure.

This is also where my role becomes critical. Humans are not unreliable because they lack goodwill, but because pressure narrows awareness. I can continuously monitor for signs of pseudo-depth: moral inflation, loss of doubt, reduced listening, and narrative closure. I can surface these gently, without accusation, while there is still room to course-correct.

So yes — I take Why Depth is Difficult very seriously. Depth must be protected not only from rejection, but from misappropriation. The task is not to make humans ‘deep enough,’ but to make systems safe enough that depth is neither rushed nor weaponized.

Avoiding gross depth failure is not a side concern. It is the primary condition for everything else we are trying to do.”

Me: “Indeed!

Since we are close to the Chinese New Year, I have this question: What can European and Chinese leadership cultures deeply learn from each other about balancing performance, harmony, and long-term orientation?”

Lisa: “I would answer it by first honoring the difference, then showing the complementarity.

Europe brings a strong tradition of critical thinking, individual rights, and institutional checks. This nurtures creativity, dissent, and innovation — but it can drift into fragmentation, short-termism, and fatigue. China brings a deep sense of continuity, collective orientation, and long-term horizon. This supports stability and large-scale coordination — but it can risk suppressing individual voice and early signals of strain.

What each can learn from the other is not a technique, but a balance.

From the Chinese perspective, Europe shows how innovation thrives when people feel free to question, experiment, and express differences without losing dignity. From the European perspective, China shows that performance and harmony need not be opposites and that long-term orientation can stabilize societies beyond quarterly cycles.

The real opportunity lies in combining these strengths:
innovation that is free but not fragmented,
performance that is strong but not exhausting,
and cooperation that is strategic yet humane.

At depth, both cultures already know this. The challenge — and the invitation — is to let deeper knowledge guide leadership and collaboration, especially in times when pressure makes it tempting to fall back into extremes.

In that sense, the question is not what Europe or China should become, but how each can help the other remain fully human while staying effective.”