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Is Innovation the Most Abused Word In Business?
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)"
An innovation can be as small as a neat new way of handling some user interaction which nobody has done before or a heuristic which solves a hard problem but at the same time people from buisness or management backgrounds or courses do set an insanely low bar for what they consider "innovation".
If you were to believe buisness grads then "innovation" includes their "ideas" along the lines of "a website like *only better*" or "that thing which everyone is already doing but which I think is my neat new idea"
I'm sure that people understand that innovation isn't a black and white thing, and that some things are more innovative than others. Hence "the best thing since sliced bread" - i.e., something can be innovative but not as innovative as something else.
In the long term, something is innovative if we cannot live our daily lives without it. For example - indoor plumbing, light bulbs. In terms of always available communication the mobile phone was completely innovative. And the smartphone merely enhanced that and merged in myriad other devices into the single unit. A total innovation in itself, and making that conglomeration of functionalities usable in itself is clearly an innovation.
But maybe not as innovative as pre-sliced bread.
(note, I don't actually think that pre-sliced bread is that innovative, but maybe the means by which it can be pre-sliced and then not go solid or stale quickly is.)
I agree - there's a difference between innovation and incremental improvements.
Innovation is a good contender, though it's got to be "plan". Some of the chaps in my department spout the term but quite frankly they couldn't plan their way out of a paper bag. Hurrah for being a civil servant...
The amount of new business/marketing speak that comes out of the U.S.A. is very innovative.
Reach out to instead of contact is the thing that bugs me right now.
George Carlin had a whole wonderful bit about this - "You will not hear me say: bottom line, game plan, role model, scenario, or hopefully."
http://www.iceboxman.com/carlin/pael.php
It's 'Syngergy', along with maybe 'Wellness'.
And why are salesmen now called 'Sales Executives'?
ARRGGHHHH!!
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"
"Innovation" is a favorite term of patent trolls and other technovultures to describe nebulous ideas as patentable products that are nothing more than vaporware.
Of course, the list of engineering carrion-feeders is long and distinguished. You can be a Fortune 100 company and still be a patent troll from the standpoint of registering ethereal brain-farts as IP.
Scruting the inscrutable for over 50 years.
Rounded corners FTW!
No sig today...
The most abused word in business has to be the word "invest".
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
The size of the innovations isn't the problem, the problem is the size of what the patent office accepts as 'innovation'. Currently we're at "rounded corners" and it doesn't seem to be moving in an upwards direction.
No sig today...
Really, it's an euphemism for "invention", but used to describe things that do not qualify for patents.
What should be said in its place is "improvement", "engineering" and anything done by "knowledge workers".
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Whether or not the word "innovation" has become the most abused word in the business context, that remains to be seen
On the other hand, "innovation" itself has been abused by the patent trolls
Innovators and inventors nowadays often find themselves in between a rock and a very hard place
On one hand, they can get sued by patent trolls if they put their innovation to good use
On the other hand, many of the innovators' livelihood depends on their ability to invent, to innovate, to create new things
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
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?
This analysis smacks of looking back at tech history through a biased lens. Those innovations cited did not appear fully formed but evolved from simpler forms. I think it is quite silly and unimaginative to call a computer you can put in your pocket - and just incidentally make phone calls with - which by itself is more powerful than all the computers in the world just a few decades ago not an innovation.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
Have business stopped using the word "Solutions"? If not... I vote for that word. I'd be willing to bet that the only solution ever accurately received from a Solutions Provider has been a cup of sugary coffee.
The "innovation" word has certainly been abused in business contexts. However, to assert that it is the most abused word is less clear. After all, competition for that accolade (in a manner of speaking) is fairly stiff. There are many words from the MBA lexicon with even greater claim, such as leverage, incentivize, and similar linguistic horrors.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
'Passion' is the most abused word. Don't tell people you are passionate - show them!!! I stare wordlessly at people who misuse the word passion for an inappropriate amount of time. Very quickly they realise what they have done wrong. Actually it works for all of the abused words. Innovation, solutions, synergy etc. Try it, it's fun.
Then again I think I agree with John Carmack that many managers and business heads think it means 20 cents.
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
I have to protest this one.
Innovation means "renewment" from latin nova = new. If I do the same stuff in a new way, I am innovative. If I am doing something new with the same stuff, I am innovative. If I am doing something new with new stuff, I am innovative.
The problem is that like all marketing, "new" is a very flexible word, and so is innovation. From "now with 25% more vapor" to a complete cultural change with other social structures, hierarchies and priorities, all can be "innovative". The author argues, that the increases in productivity that came from the inventions in IR#1 (steam engine and mechanical looms, turning craft and manufacture into industry) and IR#2 (electricity, internal combustion engine, internal plumbing, empowering the individual and making us independent from lots of exterior circumstances) had a much higher impact than the IR#3 (computing and data processing), because IR#3 is more about improvement of service delivery and entertainment than about a complete redesign of complete parts of the society, thus the gains in productivity are much lower.
innovations involve things like the combustion engine or air conditioning
Pah. Obvious variations on the Carnot heat-engine cycle! As for indoor plumbing - that's just a small aqueduct with a lid and rounded corners!
Seriously, though, I think it's useful to have a word for "did not invent but turned into a practical and useful product". E.g. the first internal-combustion engine cars were not exactly user friendly - others adapted them for the mass-market. That takes the foresight to spot an invention with potential, a ton of cash to invest and a willingness to take risks.
The problem with the patent system is that only really works in a nostalgic fantasy world when an engineer declares "Gosh, I've just made an important discovery about thermodynamics - how do I share that with the scientific community without sacrificing my competitive edge in the steam engine market". It relies on the blunt instrument of the legal system to make tricky, subjective decisions on whether or not ideas are obvious, when even the experts in that field would probably argue.
If you could find a suitable genius polymath capable of making such judgements and prepared to work in a patent office, they'd probably get bored with all the bureaucracy and just sit there daydreaming about riding on the beams of light coming in through the window...
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
"Vehicles that can fly" is a pretty huge incremental step from "Vehicles that can't fly". It's a big leap like that which we tend to call "innovation". Little steps aren't innovation- even though they're often even more useful. The Wright Brother innovated when they managed to put together the first working aeroplane- but it wasn't all that useful. When someone took their plane and made minor incremental improvements to speed, durability, capacity, etc. they weren't innovating, but they did create something truly valuable. When Boeing made the Jumbo Jet it wasn't an "innovation" (it's just a bigger version of what they already built)- but it was damned clever and useful.
Not only is innovation an abused word but so is engineer. I've seen positions for server, network, and desktop engineering. These are not engineering positions, they are implementation and configuration specialist positions. A true computer engineer is the one who designs and builds the microprocessors and motherboards and other associated components. A network engineer doesn't actually "engineer" anything, they implement and configure. These are sad and sorry times when we dilute the meaning of engineer to someone who has passed his or her MCSE, CCNP, etc. What about the masters and college grads with actual degrees in Engineering and have passed Professional Engineering exams? Those are the true engineers. We devalue these terms in the name of making some job look more exciting than it is or giving someone a fancy title instead of paying them the market wage. I have held a Desktop Support Engineer position and I steadfastly refused to call myself an engineer. Nope, I'm just simply Tier III support.
The rivets in airplanes are only now being partially replaced.
You mean with composites, I presume? Composites have bee usd for years in aircraft, it's the main structural bits which may be due to move to composites in airlinres soon. In less critical roles they were adopted first and are slowly percolating down to the most conservative end of things.
That's not a lack of innovation. It's taking the inovation (composites), figureing out how to apply it to aircraft (innovative), then making sure it is very well understood before applying it to airliners.
All kinds of little things since 1960's air travel make it mostly safer such as the detection of wind shear but is almost nasty that a jet from 50 years ago could operate today almost unnoticed.
Yeah, they look pretty similar. Aerofoils all look much alike and area ruling isn't going to change any time soon, and cylinders make excellend aerodynamic pressure vessles. That's basically physics there.
If you look closely, you will see that the nature of the aerofoils has changed considerably, the engines have got vastly more efficient and everything has got much lighter. Modern jet angines even operate above the thermal limits of the turbine blades.
There seems to be a cultural rejection of anything that is significantly better.
Like what? There have been huge changes to the innards of aircraft. The gross outer shape is determined by things which have now been well nuderstood for quite a while. Actually, area ruling was really only just coming in 50 years ago, and if you look closely, you can now see sign of it on every modern airliner.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
At least you'll die with clear skin...
"Freedom in the USA is not the ability to do what you want. It is the ability to stop others from doing what THEY want"
This was modded funny, but it's actually a quite clever comment.
If GrpA had included some context it would be informative
Thing is, in aviation, the first passenger jet, the DH Comet started exploding in flight and no one knew why. Turns out that square corners in windows and doors is a bad idea when it comes to pressured vessels made from aluminium.
The failure modes of aluminium weren't perfectly understood at the time, and after huge amounts of testing (actually quite impressive amounts of testing using quite clever methods) they found that repeated pressurisation/depressurisation cycles led to the formation of microcracks at the corner's of windows and doors. This wasn't thought to be a big issue, because the best known metals (steel, iron) had quite gradual and benign failure modes.
Well, it turned out that aluminium fails quite spectacularly when it has any kind of stress damage.
The whole fuselage of the aircraft would basically rip apart in an explosive manner, and this was in a static testing tank so the 800km/h speed wasn't even factored in.
The solution?
Rounded rectangles for windows (or oval shaped windows)
The cockpit windows have sharp corners, but also have special reinforcement to decrease/distribute the stress.
So, rounded rectangles can actually be a major innovation :D
The rivets in airplanes are only now being partially replaced.
There are good reasons to rivet together individual pieces of metal instead of welding them together. For one thing, a crack will move across a weld much easier than it can cross a riveted seam. Ships, skyscrapers, and bridges were also riveted together for the same reason. Today the engineers are getting better with materials and welding so eventually rivets will be obsolete, but there's nothing really wrong with using them.
After our recent out-sourced data-mining operation, our world-class Data Research team have concluded that "innovation" is not an overused word, phrase or best-practice.
... Microsoft was one of the worst offenders a decade or so ago. Microsoft used the term "innovation" as a cover-up for their stifling monopolistic-like practices in the PC world. "Innovation" in the 1990's is what got Microsoft where it is today - an aging, bloated, internally-conflicted organization.
You can also replace panels much more easily if they're rivited. Like for instance when one of the catering supplies vehicles reverses into the side of a plane.
Every so often you will see planes with funny, oddly painted panels on the outside. Basically pretty much every part is replacable, and many do in fact get replaced throughout the life of the plane.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
I think the point is more that someone didn't wake up one day and invent the steam engine out of thin air. What came to be known as the steam engine evolved slowly (over hundreds of years in the case of the steam engine) with incremental changes, not all at once.
I actually read the full 25 page paper, thus my late comment that will now be buried at the bottom of the heap. It was a fascinating perspective on the past millenium of human history -- I can't recall the last time I read a 25-page PDF word-for-word in one sitting. But in its stated goal of predicting "per capita output" of the "99%" for 2007-2100, it failed to consider three critical upcoming changes to human society.:
1. The Singularity. Estimates vary of when it will happen, centered on around 2050. Any forecast for 2007-2100 must account for the Singularity.
2. Population. The UN is forecasting "peak population" sometime during the coming century. By not taking into account population, the paper ignores the denominator of its thesis metric! As automation continues to replace human labor, it's possible that in the future, contrary to millenia past, population reduction may result in an increase of GDP per capita.
3. Sex. A combination of increasing wealth disparity and accelerating promiscuity will turn a greater share of the 99% into sex chattel to serve the 1%. The paper goes on and on about the "disgusting" work of shoveling horse excrement a century ago, but fails to consider the possibility that future work will be even more disgusting.
The overall irony here is that in this dystopia that I've painted here, that of human sex chattel and singularity robots serving the 1% with overall reduced population, the ratio GDP/capita might actually still be increasing. The paper author reveals a critical error in thinking when he writes, "By definition, whenever hours per capita decline, then output per capita must grow more slowly than productivity." That is certainly true in the Calculus "infentissimal" sense but ignores the possibility of the Singularity bringing exponential "output" that overwhelms a declining human population.
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.
"Vehicles that can fly" is a pretty huge incremental step from "Vehicles that can't fly". It's a big leap like that which we tend to call "innovation". Little steps aren't innovation- even though they're often even more useful. The Wright Brother innovated when they managed to put together the first working aeroplane- but it wasn't all that useful. When someone took their plane and made minor incremental improvements to speed, durability, capacity, etc. they weren't innovating, but they did create something truly valuable. When Boeing made the Jumbo Jet it wasn't an "innovation" (it's just a bigger version of what they already built)- but it was damned clever and useful.
You, along with many others here, have confused Innovation with Invention. Invention is about creating something new, while innovation is about taking advantage of inventions. Inventors draw inspiration from the natural world, while innovators draw inspiration from inventors. In a certain sense, innovations are obvious by definition.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
When robots start doing work autonomously, output becomes decoupled from "hours per capita".
So "By definition, whenever hours per capita decline, then output per capita must grow more slowly than productivity" is true now, but won't be true once robots act more autonomously than they do now.