Stop saying 'innovation' - Scott Berkun | The Economist

Einstein, Ford, Picasso and Edison rarely said the word innovation and neither should you. Every Fortune 500 crowd I've said this to laughs and agrees. The abuse of words like innovation, disruption, game changing and breakthrough is killing us. We're tripping over our own egos, lost in the ignorance of romance for the vagaries of pseudo-thinking associated with these words. The more often people in a company use this word, the less likely anything worthy of that label is actually happening, as it's often the confused and the desperate who believe simply saying a word again and again like a magic spell causes anything at all to happen.

There are four ways to return to sanity and put more ideas to use in your world:

1.  Ask people who say innovation what they mean. If ever anyone says the word in a meeting, ask "Can you give an example of what you mean by innovative?" If they can't, you've just saved everyone in the room hours of time. Using the i-word is often a cop-out for clear thinking. They are trying to signify creativity, without actually being creative.

2.  Use better words instead. Often people mean one or more of a) we want new ideas b) we want better ideas c) we want faster or bigger changes d) we need to take more risks e) we just want to be perceived as being innovative. Any of these short phrases are fine as they are clear and actionable in ways the word innovation alone never is. Ask everyone around you to use them instead, and keep tabs on yourself too.

3.  Ban the i-word from e-mails and internal documents. It's one thing for marketers to use innovation in press releases. It's another to let that word cloud up how people making things think about what they're making. There is a big difference between change and progress, and what people, especially your customers, want is the later. The word innovation clouds the distinction. Reward people who use the word sparingly and find eloquent ways to express the positive change their ideas can achieve.

4.  Worry more about being good because you probably aren't. If your organization struggles to make half-decent products, has the morale of a prison, and nothing ever changes much less improves, why are you obsessing about innovation? You need to learn the basics of how to make something good, that solves real problems, works reliably, is affordable, and is built by a happy, passionate well rewarded staff that believes good ideas have a chance. If you can make the changes necessary for these basic but all too rare attributes to be true, then innovation, in all its forms, will be much easier to achieve, and it might just happen all on its own.

Scott Berkun is the author of "The Myths of Innovation" and two other books. A former Microsoftie, he lives near Seattle, Wash. Here is the link to the original article.

Comments

[Chris Luxford]

Innovation is a dangerously over used word by many. I agree with the above premise that it often means something else. I will content however that people use the word innovation when what they really describe is in fact basic improvement. If we accept that innovation is a step function change over anything that any competitor is doing and brings to market something radically new in either commercial model, go-to-market, or even product or service, then innovation is rare...yet based on common business language everyone is doing it.

In fact everyone is simply tweaking what they already have. Reacting to market conditions, dropping price, bundling products, offer value-added services, etc. It is just improvement, not innovation.

To me innovation is the execution of an invention (of any type) into a product or service

[Frank Connolly]

Like "Knowledge Management" the word has been done to death in recent times and now the "innovation" space is full of snake-oil salespeople and those who are desperately seeking the next big thing. Sadly, as the article quite rightly suggests in dot point 4, what many are looking for is something something quite different.

It seems counter-productive too to be encouraging people down an innovation path before they resolve basic procedural and cultural issues. Govt is the classic example at the moment, the rhetoric coming out says "we need to be more innovative, we need to innovate," and yet when the new ideas or concepts are presented they are promptly viewed through a lens of perceived risk and discounted. The bureaucrat presupposes that the ideas forthcoming will be in alignment with their current paradigms and when something is new and or innovative they by definition, are generally not.

A State Govt jurisdiction at the moment is going through the process of an "Innovation Plan" a process oriented and formulaic approach to innovation which ignores fundamentals that need to be addressed and will only create greater cynicism around the very concept across the sector. In a sector where most promotion comes on the back of technical, not leadership skill, and micro-management is the norm rather than exception, I'd suggest innovation is one of the last frontiers you'd be trying to conquer.

Some months ago I decided on a policy of no more use of the "I" word on my site for fear of association with those playing in the space at the moment, and also a blanket ban the "light bulb graphic" in any shape or form which has come to be a symbol of the new "soft innovation" that is now doing everyone a disservice.