New research from King’s Business School has suggested too much success can be a problem, at least when it comes to innovation.
The study, carried out alongside colleagues at University of Liverpool Management School, University of Hohenheim and Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University and published in Research Policy, finds that employees who experience exceptionally high levels of success are less likely to see their next ideas implemented.
Researchers suggest the reason is that extreme success can inflate self-confidence and perceived social status and reduce collaboration and the willingness to develop ideas as part of a team.
Two additional experiments backed up the findings, showing that people who had achieved outstanding success were more inclined to work alone and perceived themselves as having higher social status.
The researchers conclude that organizations which rely on employee innovation platforms or idea programs should recognize and reward success but also take care not to let top achievers become isolated from their colleagues. Sustaining innovation, they argue, depends on keeping high performers embedded in teams, open to collaboration and aware of how inflated self-perceived status or a focus on maintaining status can quietly stall creativity.
“For business schools and corporate innovation programs, this result is a wake-up call. Top performers must not be isolated, their success can inadvertently become a barrier to collaboration, which in turn undermines long-term innovation. What matters is not just that you succeed, but how you succeed. Organizations need to recognize that high achievers may require additional support to stay connected and creative,” said Professor Oguz A. Acar, Professor of Marketing & Innovation at King’s Business School.
“We previously assumed success is always good for innovation. Our findings challenge that: when someone hits a very high peak, later performance may drop because collaborators disappear and self?perception changes. The mechanisms we identified, reduced team?based idea development and inflated perceived social status, point to very concrete levers for managers seeking to maintain a high?innovation pipeline,” said Selina L. Lehmann, University of Hohenheim.
More information:
Hung M. Dao et al, Not all success is created equal: The innovation costs of extreme success, Research Policy (2026). DOI: 10.1016/j.respol.2025.105343
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