Are You a Fish or a Gorilla? Rethinking Your Innovation Strategy

When it comes to innovation, here's a surprisingly insightful question: are you a fish, or are you a gorilla?

It might sound odd at first, but this analogy offers a powerful lens through which to evaluate how you (or your company) approach innovation. It’s one I often use with executives who are trying to sharpen their strategy for bringing new ideas to life.

Let me explain.

A fish lays thousands—sometimes millions—of eggs. But once those eggs are released, they’re on their own. No guidance. No protection. The fish is essentially betting on numbers: that at least a few will survive by sheer chance.

A gorilla, on the other hand, takes the complete opposite approach. They have just one offspring at a time. And that baby? It's nurtured with intense care, support, and protection. The gorilla invests deeply in that one life, guiding it all the way into adulthood.

So, which one are you when it comes to innovation?

Innovation is about resolving uncertainty

At its core, innovation is an exercise in resolving uncertainty. Having an idea? That’s the easy part. The real challenge is turning that idea into something viable, useful, and scalable. And the strategies for doing this vary wildly.

Some organizations adopt the fish approach: launching tons of initiatives, dabbling in dozens of ideas, hoping that one or two will make it through the noise. It’s a volume game.

Others take the gorilla approach: they focus on one or two ideas at a time, investing heavily in nurturing them—research, iteration, feedback loops, pivots—everything needed to give that single idea its best shot at survival and growth.

But the Best Innovators? They're Birds.

The truth is, the most effective innovators aren't strictly fish or gorillas. They’re more like birds.

Birds lay a small number of eggs. They watch over each one, but if it becomes clear that a chick isn’t going to make it—due to weakness, risk, or poor conditions—they make the tough call to stop investing in it. They don’t pour endless energy into every single hatchling. Instead, they adapt. They focus their efforts where there's real potential and let go where there isn’t.

Great innovators generate many ideas (like fish), nurture the promising ones (like gorillas), but also know when to let go (like birds). They balance exploration with focused execution. They manage their portfolio of ideas with care and discipline, not just hope.

So maybe the better question isn’t “Are you a fish or a gorilla?”

Maybe it’s: Are you thinking like a bird?