(These are the opening remarks I made at the first meeting of AGSM Executive Programmes Roundtable on Leadership, Creativity and Innovation) The word innovation, still in these very hard and disturbing times appears almost daily in the media. There are 360 million references to innovation on Google and on my Google Daily RSS feed I receive notice of new books and articles released daily globally on the topic. And now I get emails daily suggesting that innovation will be the saviour of the current economic times. Every job advertisement talks about the applicant having the need to be creative and innovative. It appears this thing called innovation is a common everyday occurrence. The reality is one might be able to talk about it as if it is. In practice, the reality is very different. Innovation is an outcome. Nothing more. Creativity and invention with their fellow travellers risk, experimentation and the until more recently undiscussable “f” word “failure” are the drivers of innovation.