In the face of rising costs, cautious consumers, and an uncertain global economy, many health and wellness companies are asking: Should we pull back on innovation until things settle?
Companies are freezing funds, despite recognizing the importance of innovation for future growth.
Even as they reduce their spending on innovation, many companies still consider it vital for growth. According to a recent McKinsey study, one-third of the executives surveyed anticipate that over a quarter of their companies' revenue will come from products not currently available in the market within the next three years.
In fact, some of the most successful organizations are using this moment to accelerate innovation, not delay it. For CEOs and growth leaders navigating the intersection of healthcare, wellness, and technology, there’s a clear message: bold innovation during disruption leads to long-term out performance.
Here are 5 ways to invest in innovation more strategically, without spending more.
Step 1: Match your spending to your strategic priorities
Innovation spending often reflects legacy decisions, not current goals. Companies often continue to fund projects in markets they have quietly deprioritized or exited. In a category like health and wellness, where consumer needs and regulations shift quickly, this can be a costly mistake.
What to do now:
• Re-map your innovation spend against your updated strategic priorities.
• Flag projects that don’t align with growth areas you’ve publicly committed to.
• Kill or re-scope those that are out of sync.
Ask yourself: Are we still funding yesterday’s priorities with today’s dollars?
Step 2: Right-size your portfolio to match your risk appetite
Not all innovation is created equal. A company that wants to lead the fem tech category, for example, needs bold, high-risk innovation bets—moonshots. One that plays in clinical nutrition might stick to steady, incremental gains.
Where this breaks down:
Many organizations cut high-risk, high-reward projects during downturns, leaving only low-growth, incremental work behind. That leads to a pipeline with no breakout potential.
What to do now:
• Define your innovation risk profile.
• Audit how your portfolio stacks up (e.g., 20% disruptive, 50% adjacent, 30% core).
• Re-balance to ensure your mix aligns with both your ambition and your risk tolerance.
Step 3: Look across the whole enterprise—not just business units
One BU’s low-hanging fruit could be more valuable than another’s most ambitious bet. But too often, innovation resources are distributed evenly rather than strategically.
What to do now:
• Conduct a cross-enterprise review of all current innovations
• Compare opportunities head-to-head, regardless of which team owns them.
• Shift investment toward the initiatives with the highest enterprise-level upside.
This step alone can reveal duplication, misaligned incentives, or low-impact projects quietly absorbing big dollars.
Step 4: Prune low-ROI projects early and often
Innovation portfolios often include projects that consume resources but yield minimal returns. Without a formal gatekeeping process, it’s easy for these initiatives to linger well past their expiration date.
What to do now:
• Build clear stage gates for your pipeline.
• Identify a senior lead with permission to evaluate (and end!) projects that don’t meet the bar.
• Centralize your innovation data to ensure visibility across all active efforts.
Step 5: Close the gap between expectations and reality
Does your team consistently overestimate ROI, under estimate time to market, or rely on unvetted pet projects? You’re not alone. Many organizations miss targets not because of lack of effort, but because their assumptions were flawed from the start.
What to do now:
• Conduct postmortems on past initiatives to spot patterns in what works (and what doesn’t).
• Use those learnings to recalibrate revenue assumptions, launch timelines, and cost structures in your current pipeline.
• Watch for spending that slips through the approval process.
This level of rigor helps eliminate inflated projections and ensures your team is building on evidence.
Final Takeaway: Innovate because the pressure is on
The instinct to “wait out the storm” is understandable. Instead, take a moment to use this time to reframe your innovation efforts and ensure they align with what matters most.
At Compass Marketing, we help health and wellness brands find opportunity in uncertainty. Whether it’s rethinking your brand’s innovation pipeline, bringing cross-functional teams together to identify gaps, reprioritizing resources, developing new revenue models, or identifying the right partners to scale with, we’re here to guide the way forward.
Feel free to reach out if you need more tips for resetting your innovation efforts.
Lynda is a consumer marketing expert with a track record of successful U.S. and global product launches. She has created new product innovations across consumer wellness, from personal care to digital health. She is a founding partner of Compass Marketing.
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