Insights
Leading innovation in safety-critical systems
Lessons from NASA’s post-Columbia transformation
When the Space Shuttle Columbia was lost in 2003, NASA learned a hard truth: technical excellence alone is not enough to ensure safety or sustained innovation in complex organisations. The subsequent investigation revealed that, beyond the technical causes, its organisational culture had eroded NASA’s ability to act on early warning signs.
In the years that followed, NASA’s Johnson Space Center (JSC) underwent a profound cultural transformation. Led by Mike Coats, former astronaut and Director of JSC, and in part by John Saiz, former Chief Technologist at JSC, this work focused on leadership behaviours, the organisational climate, and internal practices & processes in one of the world’s most innovative and safety-critical environments.
The lessons from this period did not remain within NASA. They later informed the development of the Institute for Manufacturing’s Innovation Culture Framework – a practical model now used globally to help organisations strengthen the human systems that underpin innovation, particularly in highly regulated and technically complex settings.
Innovation in focus: Rethinking Innovation 2026
At the April Rethinking Innovation event hosted by IfM Engage, Saiz and Coats will share first-hand insights from NASA’s journey and explain how those experiences directly shaped the Framework.
The challenge: when technical excellence is not enough
At the time of Columbia, NASA’s technology was world-class. Yet investigations showed that cultural norms – hierarchical decision-making, siloed communication, and failure to maintain a learning environment – had weakened the organisation’s ability to surface and respond to risk.
At JSC, home to Mission Control and human spaceflight leadership, this realisation forced deep introspection. Leaders faced a stark question: how could NASA preserve the discipline required for safety while rebuilding openness, learning, and innovation?
In response, JSC undertook a sweeping multi-year cultural transformation. Early efforts focused on listening, using climate assessments, barrier analyses, and benchmarking against other high-reliability organisations.
Three themes emerged:
- Leadership behaviours matter as much as technical excellence
- An organisational environment of open-mindedness, accountability, and mutual respect was essential to innovation and safety
- Processes and incentives had to reinforce, not undermine, desired behaviours
Under Mike Coats’ leadership, JSC embarked on a holistic approach to address these themes. His leadership team launched intensive leadership training programmes that built on a business imperative, emphasising open-mindedness, inclusion, collaboration, and innovation. To sustain momentum and foster accountability, JSC established the Inclusion and Innovation Council to identify cultural barriers, sponsor innovation initiatives, and promote transparency between leadership and the workforce.
In addition, JSC recognised that sustaining innovation required systemic reinforcement. Policies, procedures and incentive systems had to align with the new cultural expectations. For instance, JSC, revamped its mentoring programme, redesigned its recognition programmes, and sponsored a number of work-life balance initiatives as part of the strategy to maintain high engagement and creativity.
In 1981 Columbia was the first Space Shuttle orbiter to fly in space, marking a new era in space flight. Tragedy struck in 2003 when the shuttle was lost along with its seven-member crew. Credit: NASA
From practice to theory: the birth of the Innovation Culture Framework
By the early 2010s, JSC had effectively become a living laboratory for understanding how culture enables innovation in complex technical systems.
The lessons learned were formalised in the paper “How culture affects innovation in an organisation”. Drawing on experience from NASA, extensive benchmarking with complex technical organisations and established innovation and organisational theory, the paper articulates how leadership behaviour, organisational climate, and embedded practices interact to shape innovation capability.
This work then served as the basis for the IfM’s Innovation Culture Framework. Rather than treating culture as an abstract or “soft” concept, the Framework treats it as a set of observable, diagnosable, and actionable elements that can be deliberately shaped to improve innovation outcomes, structured around three mutually reinforcing pillars:
- Transformational Leadership – how leaders motivate, empower, and role-model behaviours that support innovation and change.
- Organisational Climate and Environment – the lived experience of employees, including psychological safety, inclusion, adaptability, and openness to new ideas.
- Organisational Practices and Processes – the formal systems, incentives, and routines (such as mentoring, feedback, and recognition) that either reinforce or inhibit innovative behaviour.
The Framework was tested and refined through applied research, including leadership interviews, focus groups, and workshop-based trials with participating organisations. This work was undertaken through IfM Engage’s Strategic Technology and Innovation Management (STIM) Consortium, a collaborative research and practitioner network that brings together industrial organisations, policymakers, and academics to explore how organisations can build and sustain innovation capability in practice.
STIM member organisations put the Framework to work, using Institute for Manufacturing diagnostics and roadmapping tools to uncover how culture was shaping their ability to innovate. Through repeated testing, discussion, and refinement, the Framework was stress-tested in real organisational settings – ensuring it evolved into something leaders could actively use, not just admire in theory, particularly in highly regulated and technically complex environments.
“The Innovation Culture Framework,” says Saiz, “bridges theory and practice. It translates NASA’s hard-earned lessons into a structured, assessable approach that organisations can use to diagnose cultural strengths and barriers, align leadership behaviour with desired outcomes, and embed innovation more deeply into everyday ways of working”.
Impact: from NASA to industry
The cultural renewal at JSC produced tangible results. Space Shuttle operations resumed safely in 2005, the International Space Station was completed without major incident, and NASA went on to lead new programmes such as Commercial Crew, the Orion spacecraft, and the Gateway space station that will orbit the moon – all built on collaboration, openness, and continuous learning.
But the influence of this work now extends far beyond NASA. The Innovation Culture Framework has since been adopted by companies and institutions as both a diagnostic and a roadmap – helping leaders align leadership behaviour, workplace climate, and organisational systems to support sustained innovation
As Saiz concludes, the lessons learned at NASA are not unique to spaceflight: “organisations operating in highly complex, regulated environments face similar human challenges, and the Innovation Culture Framework provides leaders with a way to diagnose and shape those dynamics.”
The Gateway space station hosts the Orion spacecraft. Credit: NASA
Join us at Rethinking Innovation 2026
The challenges NASA confronted after Columbia – balancing discipline with openness, and safety with innovation – are no longer unique to spaceflight. Organisations across manufacturing, engineering, and technology now face similar pressures as regulation increases, systems grow more complex, and the cost of failure rises.
NASA’s post-Columbia transformation demonstrates that culture is not a “soft” issue, but a critical enabler of performance in high-risk environments. The Innovation Culture Framework translates these hard-earned lessons into a structured, practical approach that leaders can use to diagnose cultural barriers, align leadership behaviour, and embed innovation more deeply into everyday ways of working.
These themes sit at the heart of Rethinking Innovation 2026, IfM Engage’s flagship annual conference, which will take place on 16 April 2026 in Cambridge, UK. At the event, John Saiz and Mike Coats will share first-hand reflections from NASA’s journey and explore how its lessons apply to organisations navigating today’s complex innovation landscape.
