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Is Innovation the Most Abused Word In Business?

Posted by samzenpus on from the give-it-a-name dept.

dcblogs writes "Most of what is called innovation today is mere distraction, according to a paper by economist Robert Gordon, written for the National Bureau of Economic Research. Real innovations involve things like the combustion engine or air conditioning, not the smartphone. The paper includes thought experiments to help you gain more respect for genuine innovations such as indoor plumbing. The Financial Times has posted the complete 25-page paper.(pdf)"

7 of 287 comments (clear)

  1. Re:It is abused but I think this sets too high a b by Virtucon · · Score: 4, Funny

    you're also forgetting that MBA's and Financial People use "Innovation" all the time to take funds from people and transform them into vapor.

    --
    Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
  2. Re:Innovation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    What's really innovative about sliced bread is how they slice it without cutting the wrapper it comes in. Ingenious!

  3. Re:Yes by GrpA · · Score: 4, Funny

    Rounded corners?

    That's a pretty major innovation if you're talking about aviation...

    GrpA

    --
    Enjoy science fiction? "Turing Evolved" - AI, Mecha, Androids and rail-gun battles. What more could you want?
  4. Re:Innovation by Forty+Two+Tenfold · · Score: 3, Funny

    It's 3D printed.

    --
    Upward mobility is a slippery slope - the higher you climb the more you show your ass.
  5. Re:Innovation by Hognoxious · · Score: 3, Funny

    wrap a few bearskins over a wooden frame

    Ugg do that. Ugg dumb.
    Ogg do that. Ogg smart.

    Ogg take skin off bear first.

    --
    Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
  6. And nothing of value was said... by Nadaka · · Score: 3, Funny

    At the end of the day, the innovative synergy of cloud paradigms thinking outside the box right sizes the alignment to break through the clutter and diversify clear goals by leveraging facetime with generation X and empowering globalization and proactively streamline organic growth to a win-win exit strategy by collaborating on the back-end the convergence of emergent behavior of quantum nano-scale design patterns using real-time scalability using the SaaS cloud framework to create immersion in the workflow of mobile mashup for convergence with web 2.0 using html5 to clickthrough the information superhighway at 4g speeds.

  7. Re:Abused, yes. Most abused, probably not. by datavirtue · · Score: 4, Funny

    If the group is aimed at the same task then they will each subconsciously reduce their own labor. It's like when I'm driving with my wife in the car, I don't pay attention because I know she will.

    --
    I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock