The Only Certainty Is Uncertainty: Why a Culture of Innovation Will Be Critical in 2026

The global economy enters 2026 under the same shadow that defined 2025: uncertainty. The European Securities and Markets Authority warns that “heightened geopolitical uncertainties continue to drive risks across global markets.” Trade tensions between the world’s largest economies remain unresolved. Supply chains are still fragile. Cyberattacks have multiplied as geopolitical rivalry extends into the digital sphere. According to EY’s Global Economic Outlook report, global growth will slow from 3 percent in 2025 to around 2.9 percent in 2026, with advanced economies like the United States cooling from 2.8 to about 1.3 percent. The International Monetary Fund echoes this pattern of “modest growth and meaningful downside risks.”

Against this backdrop, the 2025 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences delivered a timely message. Awarded to Joel Mokyr, Philippe Aghion and Peter Howitt for explaining innovation-driven economic growth, it underscored what many leaders have sensed: when uncertainty dominates, innovation, not efficiency, is the real engine of resilience.

Defining a culture of innovation

Innovation is often mistaken for technology or product breakthroughs. In reality, it is a systemic capability: the ability of people, teams and organizations to generate, test and scale new solutions under changing conditions. A culture of innovation is the invisible infrastructure that makes this capability work. It is the shared mindset and behavioral norms that encourage questioning, experimentation and accountability. It links three levels:

1. Individuals: curious, creative and empowered to challenge assumptions.
2. Groups: diverse, psychologically safe and able to turn disagreement into discovery.
3. Organizations: structured for learning, not just control; designed to scale what works and sunset what doesn’t.

Innovation stalls quickly when one of these levels collapses. Companies invest in technology but ignore trust. They set sustainability goals but silence internal dissent. They celebrate creativity but punish failure. True innovation culture is not about comfort; it is about openness with accountability.

Why culture will decide who thrives in 2026

1. Technology: from A.I. adoption to A.I. absorption

Artificial intelligence will continue to dominate board agendas in 2026. Yet most companies remain stuck at the pilot stage. Reports from OECD and McKinsey show that while over 70 percent of firms experiment with generative A.I., fewer than 20 percent have redesigned workflows or management systems to capture its value. Technology adoption without cultural absorption creates illusory progress. Firms that thrive treat A.I. as a learning catalyst: they redesign roles, reward curiosity and appoint cross-disciplinary “A.I. ambassadors” to translate experimentation into results.

A.I. governance is shifting on both sides of the Atlantic, but in markedly different directions. The Trump administration’s new AI Action Plan signals a departure from its predecessor, emphasizing deregulation and market-driven growth in pursuit of U.S. dominance. In contrast, the E.U.’s AI Act is moving ahead with stricter guardrails, requiring companies to build transparent, accountable systems. Amid this volatility, organizations must stay agile. The most forward-looking ones treat these changing tides not as constraints but as catalysts to professionalize governance, train employees to handle data responsibly, and ensure A.I.-driven decisions can be clearly explained.

2. Sustainability: innovation building resilience

Sustainability will remain both a moral and financial imperative. In the U.S., the SEC’s forthcoming climate-disclosure requirements and investor pressure mirror the E.U.’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD). The conversation is shifting on both sides of the Atlantic, from disclosure to design.

Sustainability becomes profitable only when it is embedded in the innovation system. Take, for example, the case of BIR AS, a Nordic waste-management company planning a carbon-capture facility while running internal programs that encourage employees to propose and retire ideas quickly. This dual focus, hard technology and soft culture, allows the organization to adapt as regulations, funding and customer preferences shift.

In 2026, sustainable innovation will mean designing business models that are both carbon-aware and economically sound. As many business leaders now recognise, if a solution isn’t financially sustainable, it isn’t truly sustainable.

3. Workforce: performance with care

Hybrid work is no longer an experiment; it’s the norm. Yet many leaders still confuse flexibility with freedom from responsibility. The most innovative companies balance psychological safety with high standards, where people feel safe to speak up and are accountable for outcomes.

Small moments matter. When a new parent admits arriving after a sleepless night and a manager responds with empathy rather than judgment, that micro-interaction builds resilience. Psychological safety is built in moments like this. It is not about being “nice” but about fostering openness that fuels performance.

In 2026, amid talent scarcity and generational shifts, culture will be a company’s strongest retention tool. Employees will stay where they can contribute ideas and see impact.

How to prepare: moves for leaders

• Baseline the behaviours. Measure what drives innovation: frequency of cross-team projects, idea-to-implementation time and perceived safety to speak up. Track them monthly. You cannot improve what you cannot see.
• Redesign two workflows for A.I. and sustainability together. Pick one customer-facing and one operational process. Ask, “How could A.I. augment this?” and “What has to be true to make it more sustainable?” Redesign it together, involve those who run the process daily, not just a project team, so learning and improvement become collective.
• Create an open learning arena. Hold quarterly “innovation forums” where teams present what failed and what worked. Leaders must attend and share their own lessons. Visibility converts failure into institutional learning.
• Eliminate legacy drag. Identify two projects that consume resources without scaling potential. End them publicly and reallocate budget to emerging initiatives. Ending projects signals courage and focus.
• Train leaders in micro-skills. Teach managers to follow through visibly, use affiliative humour to reduce fear, and praise smart experiments even when results are neutral. These micro-behaviours compound into macro-trust.

The coming year will not reward prediction. It will reward preparation. Growth will slow, shocks will continue and the distance between adaptive and reactive organizations will widen.

The 2025 Nobel laureates reminded us that innovation is the foundation of prosperity. Yet innovation cannot thrive in a vacuum of fear, bureaucracy or fatigue. It grows in cultures that value questioning, resilience and learning more than certainty. Executives heading into 2026 face a choice: treat culture as a “soft” topic to revisit after the storm, or as the operating system that lets their people steer through it. Because when the only certainty is uncertainty, culture is the most reliable strategy you have. It’s also the hardest to change: abstract, slow to measure and easy to neglect, yet it’s the foundation that determines whether everything else endures.