242: Are you a Punk or a Pinstripe in Innovation?

Are you an innovator who feels caught between disruption and defensibility, wondering whether corporate innovation has lost its way?

In this episode of the Innovation Storytellers Show, I welcome back Greg Larkin, founder of Punks & Pinstripes, for a candid, often uncomfortable conversation about the current state of innovation within large organizations.

Greg does not sugarcoat it. He argues that much of corporate innovation today earns a C-minus at best, largely because it fails the ultimate test that matters when markets tighten, and investors lose patience. If an innovation team cannot clearly justify why it deserves funding when earnings miss or a disruption hits, it is already on borrowed time.

Drawing on his experience as a former Director of Innovation at Bloomberg and as an entrepreneur with multiple exits, Greg explains why innovation leadership has often been shaped by observers rather than survivors. He challenges familiar frameworks taught in boardrooms and business schools, questioning whether they prepare leaders for activist investors, AI-driven disruption, M&A fallout, or the quiet but relentless brain drain caused by the ongoing Great Resignation.

The conversation explores why pitching ideas is rarely enough anymore, why outcomes matter more than vision decks, and why many innovation teams are discovering too late that credibility is earned long before the next technological wave arrives.

The episode also moves beyond corporate structures into something more personal. Greg shares why he built Punks & Pinstripes as a community for executives climbing what he calls their second mountain. For many seasoned innovators, success on paper no longer matches purpose in practice.

Together, we unpack what happens when wartime innovators are asked to settle into peacetime routines, why that mismatch can be soul-crushing, and how authenticity, service, and reinvention are becoming essential currencies for leaders navigating the next chapter of their careers.

If innovation is facing its most precarious moment in decades, and many leaders are quietly questioning whether they still belong in the systems they helped build, what does it really take to stay relevant, investor-defensible, and human at the same time, and which mountain are you climbing right now?