New Wine, Old Bottles: Why Institutions Fail to Innovate
Why old leadership and a lack of competition are leaving both corporations and political parties stuck in the past
And no man putteth new wine into old bottles; else the new wine will burst the bottles, and be spilled, and the bottles shall perish. But new wine must be put into new bottles; and both are preserved. No man also having drunk old wine straightway desireth new: for he saith, The old is better. Luke 5:36–39, KJV
Have you ever had a good idea at work, maybe something to improve efficiency or save the company a bit of cash, only to have that idea go “to the hire-ups” and get shot down a few days later with no explanation? Tell me if you’ve heard this one before: “Well, I hear you, but we’ve always done it this way.” Those are the siren songs that lure innovators to premature, jaded deaths on the rocks of stagnation.
Organizations, once they reach a certain point, seldom like change. There are several reasons for this. Organizations tend to anchor on what made them successful, even if that success happened decades ago. They tend to value the status quo and stability—innovation means uncertainty, and no one likes that, especially when a paycheck is on the line. Sometimes, it is that they forget what got them on top in the first place. Very few people or organizations become successful simply by doing what everyone else is doing in exactly the same way.
One of the primary yardsticks used for judging the success of an organization should be how innovative they are. Innovation rises above profit margins and market share. It is the hallmark of progress, improving on something that already exists or inventing something new. Test this theory on Apple. Apple is a wildly successful company by nearly any standard, but are they giving the consumer something new? Think of your iPhone. Are you satisfied with it? Has it really changed in the last 2-3 years? 10 years?
Outside of AI, most of the innovation from the big tech companies, at least as far as the consumer is concerned, are apps. I think if you answered my question with “yes, my iPhone has greatly improved” outside of camera quality, what has actually improved is what you can do with your iPhone—a lot of which has to do with apps, available bandwidth, and processing power—most of which fall outside of Apple, Inc.
Take another example, Meta, which owns WhatsApp and Instagram, both innovative platforms and ideas when they launched, outside of Meta (they were bought). Microsoft, through complex legal mechanisms, essentially acquired OpenAI. Buying is not innovating. The one home-grown innovation big tech companies have been pushing for a while now, smart glasses, are comically objective failures.
Movies are another example of how successful industries fall flat on their face when it comes to innovation. Look at the highest-grossing movies by year. Over the last 25 years, nearly every highest-grossing movie has been a sequel or spinoff of some kind. Before 2000, there was significantly more diversity in terms of whether a high-grossing film was a sequel or not. The movies that were sequels, like Rocky II or Terminator II, did not have even close to the same level of franchise sticking power that Harry Potter, Marvel, or Star Wars have.
The law has answers for how large or anti-competitive organizations can be, but not when it comes to innovation. For example, if you were to look at Google’s recent antitrust case, a traditional antitrust lawyer might say, “Hey, it is not so bad, consumers have access to tons of free apps and there are other search options to use if the consumer wants to.” A “neo-Brandiesian” would counter and say, “But look at the insane amount of political power Google has.” Both would probably conclude, however (and as a judge did last year), that Google was in fact a monopoly.
But so what? Just because a consumer is satisfied does not mean that they are happy with a product, especially if the competing products are so poor because a monopoly has stifled them. I like Star Wars and Marvel just as much as the next person, but there are a lot of Star Wars and Marvel spinoffs. I think one of the reasons Barbie and Oppenheimer created so much excitement and fanfare is that they were great movies and original.
If an organization fails to innovate, it is probably because it lacks substantial competition. Innovation is best driven by competition. Innovation can take the form of new and useful products. Ukraine is innovating in drone warfare, and there is widespread global competition creating AI innovation. Innovation can also be in the quality of products. Competition among hundreds if not thousands of small companies is why it is so hard to get a bad bagel in New York, a lousy taco in Los Angeles, or a crappy espresso in Italy—why would a consumer tolerate a poorly made product when they can walk across the street?
However, innovating is hard when your organization is large, old, and calcified. I’m sure in every film studio or large tech company, there are 100 underlings with 100 amazing ideas for products or movies, and they were all told 100 times, “That’s interesting, but that’s not how we’ve always done it.” Besides, who cares about what the consumer may really want if they are still paying for your product?
A failure of political innovation
I think, by and large, the American political world lacks innovation for a lot of the same reasons I laid out above. Calcified institutions push policies voters don’t really want or understand—much like Zuckerberg’s glasses—but vote for them anyway because there are no other options. Their vote is validation that the policies are “satisfying” much in the same way the moviegoer keeps watching Star Wars spinoffs, even though they really want more Barbie.
I’m going to apply my innovation through competition theory to political parties because they are an easy target, but I think a lot of our institutions, such as courts, civil service, and certain constitutional procedures and protections, suffer the same uninnovative fate for the same reasons. I’m also going to pick on the Democratic Party because, well, they are objectively failing. I think the GOP has its own set of problems that is hard to see right now because they control so much of the nation’s government and civil discourse, but if I were the GOP, I would be worried about an institution that outsourced most of its purpose to Turning Point USA and can paper over its factionalism by sheer force of a rapidly aging personality.1
For anything I’m about to say to make sense, you have to accept my premise that the Democratic Party is actually failing. I’m not going to conduct an entire post-mortem, but I will cherry-pick a few key points that illustrate my perspective.2
For starters, they are bleeding voters. In 2020, Democrats had a 5% advantage over Republicans in the voter rolls; last year, it was down to 1%, and by now that may have even evaporated.
“By the end of June [2025], the RNC had $80 million on hand, compared to $15 million for the DNC. And the gap — nearly twice as large as it was at this stage in Donald Trump’s first presidency — has only grown in recent months.” (Politico).
To combat the GOP’s gerrymandering, the Democrats are trying to do the same. This appears to be in place of, rather than in addition to, advocating for policies that constituents actually want.
The most exciting thing in Democratic politics right now is Zohran Mamdani, who is not, in fact, a Democrat.3
The gerrymandering example in #3 is great, because it highlights an organization that is copying its competitor’s marketing playbook but not changing the product. It may or may not be the right tactical move, but it isn’t going to change the status quo, and it certainly isn’t innovative. Why isn’t the Democratic Party innovative? Because it is large, calcified, and lacks adequate competition.
The Democratic Party is literally calcified
Congress is old. Very old. 43% are over 60. Almost 20% are over 70. Both parties’ median age is essentially the same. (Pew). Nancy Pelosi, who led the Democratic Caucus for 20 years, is 85 and still in office, and anyone who thinks she doesn’t still pull the strings obviously hasn’t followed her career very closely.
Being old isn’t a problem per se. Elders have an immeasurable amount of experience and connections to offer younger politicians. The problem is that when they hold on to elected office instead of moving into positions in think tanks, universities, or Political Action Committees, they freeze out the non-calcified group who may have innovative ideas. Additionally, since age generally comes with being in office for a long time, these were the same people who oversaw the disastrous turn the Democratic Party has taken over the last decade. If the Democratic Party were a company, failures of this magnitude would result in “retirements” or firings.
Take Oregon and Massachusetts, both states I am very familiar with, as an example of the effects of incumbent calcification. When Senator incumbents refuse to step aside, they prevent people in the House from stepping up into their position. This, in turn, prevents the State Rep. crowd (usually younger than the Reps) from stepping into theirs. The entire apparatus becomes frozen.
Oregon: Jeff Merkley (68), who is running for reelection in 2026, and Ron Wyden (76), who is also running for reelection in 2028 (and was in the House before I was born), are freezing out four of the five Democratic representatives, all of whom are over a decade younger than them.
Massachusetts: Massachusetts’ two senators, Elizabeth Warren (76) and Ed Markey (79), are preventing six of the nine congressional representatives from stepping into their positions, all of whom are under the age of 70. (5 of 9 are younger than 60).
The calcification is more than just age. I mentioned Mamdani being the most exciting thing in Democratic politics right now. Another candidate, whom I doubt you’ve heard of, is New York’s Lt. Gov. Antonio Delgado, who is running to replace his very unpopular boss. He is getting absolutely zero traction. (Politico) What is the difference between the two candidates? I think one of the major ones is that Mamdani didn’t have to deal with the calcified, intransigent Democratic Party. He was able to get resources from other institutions that valued a different approach—and it paid off. The same people controlling policy levers and sitting in office, preventing party loyalists from moving up within the organization, are also freezing out others. There is no logical reason why Lt. Gov. Delgado should have such a hard time campaigning against an unpopular incumbent, and there is no logical reason why Mamdani shouldn’t have always had a (D) next to his name.
It is easy to compete when there is no competition
The Mamdani-Delgado contrast leads me to my final point about competition. Competition is what spurs innovation. In fact, it is the backstop against non-innovative ideas. If your competitor builds a better product, you'd better one-up them or you will be out of business.
The lack of political competition in both parties is harming states around the country: “Less than 20% of Americans live in a state where the minority party has a meaningful voice in governance.” (WSJ). The Democratic Party, at the Presidential level, has done away with competition almost entirely.
The last time the Democrats had a primary, a real primary, was 2008. There were eight candidates, and Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton represented pretty different things. In 2016, there were two candidates, and the “everyone to the right of Bernie” crowd bowed out, endorsing Clinton before a vote was even cast. A different version of the same thing happened in 2020, where “everyone to the right of Bernie” coalesced around Joe Biden, a decision I think most agreed with at the time, but looking back, I wonder if a more competitive primary or brokered convention would have elevated a better team that could have handled 2024 better. 2024, of course, didn’t have a primary either, even after Biden dropped out.
This is a startling track record, and I think one of the major reasons the Democratic Party is failing to gain traction among vast swaths of voters. Not only can they not test their platform against voter sentiment in the most real way possible—at the ballot box—but it creates a stifling heterodoxy. It is worth noting that in 2016, 2020, and 2024, every Presidential nominee (and second-place finisher) had lost previous races for the nomination—something that generally doesn’t bode well for future electoral ambitions.
How to pour new wine
The lack of innovation in politics is a lot like the parable of the wine bottles. People like the old wine, it tastes good. It is comfortable. But that wine is running out, giving everyone a headache, and there is nowhere for the new wine to go, especially when no one wants to serve the new bottles.
I don’t think the Democratic party needs to break up to reform as is often the solution with the private sector, but those old bottles—the Pelosi’s, Schumer’s, and even Obama’s of the party, are not going to solve its current crises. They can give money and guidance, but as long as they control the party, it will remain old and calcified and not innovative.
There are some things that the Democrats can do that may jump-start innovation and get them on track to a better electoral future. They are radical and, almost by my own definition, will not happen precisely because the people that would have to execute on them would have to be willing to give up power—something they seem physically incapable of doing.
Everyone who is over the age of 70 or has held office since 2012 should go—if you haven’t succeeded in nearly 15 years, find a new job. If you have succeeded, teach a younger cohort how to. Fundraise, teach, mentor. You don’t have to go home, but you shouldn’t stay here.
Have primaries. Real primaries. This means in the midterms. Representatives at the State and Federal levels should challenge Senators. The party shouldn’t punish those challengers if they lose. Don’t try to stop a brokered convention in 2028 if that is where it is headed.
Have open fighting for leadership in Congress.4
I don’t think “throw the bums out” is always the answer. But it is extremely hard for old institutions anchored in their beliefs of what worked 20 years ago to change. It’s useful for anyone in an institution to ask the following questions: Can an outsider with new ideas break into the existing party/organization/market? Will the party/organization/market understand those ideas and sell them? Will the party/organization/market pivot if those ideas aren’t gaining traction?
If the answer to any of these questions is no, then you probably have an old bottle, and if you don’t want that old bottle to split open, you need to find a new place for the new wine.
I think it is entirely plausible that when President Trump steps out of power, Turning Point USA actually becomes a powerful third party with legitimate governing power, and the GOP scrapes up whoever is left over. Alternatively, it just subsumes the GOP.
For a much more thorough analysis on the state of the Democratic Party, I recommend
, , or .For what it’s worth, I personally think there are tons of phenomenal and exciting talent in the Democratic Party, but some of my favorites, like Abigail Spanberger, Senator Slotkin, Conor Lamb, or Representative Gluesenkamp Perez, are not generating the same amount of coverage as the NY Mayoral candidate.
For all the snarky remarks about the GOP House’s leadership drama in 2023, they ultimately settled on a Speaker who has been highly successful in his role.