Innovation Management Watch Summary: “Why Salespeople Fear Pitching Radical Innovation” (MIT Sloan Management Review)

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Radical innovation often hits its toughest test after it leaves R&D: the first real customer conversations. The authors highlight a commercialization bottleneck that innovation leaders often underestimate: salespeople may hesitate to pitch radically new offers because they fear they’ll appear incompetent. That anxiety can erode confidence, reduce pitch attempts, and quietly stall the pipeline before the market has a real chance to respond. 

The challenge becomes sharper when the product is complex. Buyers ask questions, push on edge cases, and probe for proof — and when the offer is new, the seller’s usual playbook is weaker. The authors frame this as less of a motivation issue and more of a role design and enablement issue: sellers feel exposed when they can’t credibly address uncertainty in the moment. 

A key insight is that “more training” is often an incomplete fix for radical innovation. Traditional training assumes knowledge can be transferred efficiently and that sellers can quickly reach mastery before they start selling. But complexity can block that transfer — and market windows don’t always allow a long runway for every seller to become a deep expert first. The result is a gap between what the organization can build and what the go-to-market team feels safe presenting to customers. 

The proposed managerial move is a practical reset: reframe the salesperson from expert to orchestrator. In this model, the salesperson remains accountable for leading the commercial conversation — but not for personally holding every technical answer. The seller’s job is to steer discovery, surface uncertainty, and bring the right expertise into the conversation at the right moment, without treating “I’ll bring in the best person to answer that” as a credibility failure. 

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To make orchestration real (not just a slogan), the authors highlight support mechanisms such as: 

•  Expert tandems: pairing salespeople with technical or product experts for high-stakes calls, so uncertainty is handled live rather than deferred. 
•  Fast-response channels: lightweight ways for sellers to get rapid specialist support when unexpected questions arise, so the pitch doesn’t collapse under uncertainty. 

These mechanisms do more than supply answers: they reduce the psychological risk of pitching something radically new, while improving the speed and quality of learning loops between customers, sales, and the product organization. 

The final lever is cultural. The authors emphasize building an environment that values curiosity and collaboration over perfection. Radical innovation selling is inherently uncertain; leaders should normalize discovery, joint problem-solving, and learning with the customer — rather than rewarding only polished certainty that’s easier to deliver for familiar products. 

What this means for innovation leaders (application ideas): 

If you want radical innovation to scale, treat sales enablement as an innovation capability — a system designed for uncertainty, not a one-time training event. Practical moves to consider: 

1. Redesign the pitch workflow: decide when sellers should bring experts in (early discovery vs. later validation), and standardize that motion so it feels normal. 
2. Build a visible “help lane”: a named fast-response channel with agreed service levels (who responds, in what timeframe, and in what format). 
3. Reward orchestrating behavior: recognize sellers who mobilize expertise and capture customer learning, not just those who appear most confident. 
4. Reduce the fear trigger: equip sellers with language that preserves credibility while acknowledging uncertainty (e.g., “That’s a key question — let’s pull in our specialist so we can address it properly.”). 
5. Instrument the pipeline: track leading indicators like pitch attempts, expert-join rate, time-to-answer, and “no decision” outcomes for radical offers. 

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Key takeaway for innovation leaders: Radical innovation doesn’t only need strong products — it needs a go-to-market model built for ambiguity. Recast sellers as orchestrators, engineer real-time expert support, and remove the stigma of not having every answer instantly. 

This Innovation Management Watch Summary is based on the publicly available description/abstract of the MIT Sloan Management Review article “Why Salespeople Fear Pitching Radical Innovation” (February 12, 2026) by Bianca Schmitz, Olaf Plötner, and Johannes Habel. All rights to the original content remain with the respective copyright holders. Read the full article on MIT Sloan Management Review.