Last month, BusinessWeek’s Bruce Nussbaum pronounced the word innovation “dead” and introduced transformation a key concept for 2009. My take: Is innovation dead? No, it’s more alive than ever. Its meaning is dead.
The problem with innovation is that people have abused the term and taken something that used to signify a technique for creating breakthrough ideas to solve confounding problems and have turned it into a simple marketing scheme. The word has become marketinguese, overused in meetings, pitches, magazine advertisements, television commercials, and even design school presentations. What does it really mean anymore?
I just finished reading an article in IDSA’s Innovation magazine and was shocked to read a three page article that sited the term over 80 times. In many instances, 2 to 3 times in the same sentence. Is innovation a noun, verb, adverb…? After reading the article I still did not know. Is the obsessive, rampant use of the word innovation by people trying to generate quick revenue for their companies a dying trend? Let’s hope so, since it cheapens what we are all interested in creating.
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I concur. Many terms in society meet this demise. No sooner is their importance understood than it is belittled by the overuse and exploitation as a marketing measure. Lets go gadget, GREEN!!
I think “innovation” is buzz word that gets tossed around by almost everyone and anyone. The result is a dilution of the words true meaning. It undervalues those who are truly innovative and in reality few really are.
I sort of believe that innovation was once used to refer only to “big” breakthroughs, but if innovation takes place on a smaller scale, somehow it’s overdone? I just think breakthroughs are coming through at much faster paces, due to our technologies and corraling of good minds.
It IS overdone in tech vernacular and is a marketing ploy in some avenues, but no less, more “innovation” now takes place outside what society as called “the world of practical industry”.
I always try to leave an argument (be it music, religion, politics, or design) when it degenerates into the meaning of words. You know how frustrating it is when someone says a theory means it isn’t fact?
Some new innovation derivatives I have seen:
innovant – A portmanteaux of innovator and savant. Someone who is a brilliant innovator. “This could only be the work of an innovant.”
innovatory – The property of being an innovatively innovative innovator “He was an innovatory innovant!”
inno – A unit of measuring innovation. “A Microsoft Zune is -80.77 innos”
innovatude – Exactly how much innovation a single product, service, or system has. “The master innovant, Steve Jobs, unleashed the new innovative newe iPhone upgrade, which has an innovatude of 15.7 innos.”