Innovation as we’ve known it is over
The word ‘innovation’ has become increasingly meaningless for those outside of the corporate world. That will have to change.
We’re in a period of uncertainty now, which always happens after an election. When it comes to wondering what’s next, the field is entirely level. No one can predict the future, but the current discourse leads me to believe that a core aspect of our global economy is going to change: Innovation won’t be what it used to be, and that’s a very good thing.
I left Washington, D.C. and spent the past three years living in Silicon Valley — not in San Francisco, but Palo Alto, California. I became intimately familiar with the cadence of the town and its surrounding environ. The astronomical cost of housing, food and basic amenities, the homelessness crisis and, yes, the ecosystem of innovation.
The word “innovation” holds so many things at once — one would argue too many things. There’s its actual, dictionary meaning, “The act of introducing something new” or “something newly introduced”. Then there’s the more ephemeral, cultural meaning it carries. It is, for some, a word filled with promise and opportunity — the necessary component of a successful corporate narrative. It is the welcome mat for investors and sought-after talent. The word innovation is a billboard that screams: “New things are happening/will happen here!”
As Leslie Kwoh wrote for The Wall Street Journal in 2012:
“Businesses throw around the term to show they’re on the cutting edge of everything from technology and medicine to snacks and cosmetics. Companies are touting chief innovation officers, innovation teams, innovation strategies and even innovation days.”
Nearly five years later, little has changed. Companies still want to be seen as innovative, because no one in their right mind would work for or invest in a company claiming to be stagnant. The popularity of the word innovation relative to “invention” continues to rise, according to Google Books’ Ngram Viewer. (Note: “Transformation”, another business buzzword, still beats out both.)
The ubiquity of innovation has come at a cost, however. The word has now long been dismissed not only as a buzzword but a harbinger of, pardon me, complete bullsh*t. It has come to define new technological toys few people can actually use and widgets that simultaneously distract us and to which we become addicted.
In 2013, Emma Green tackled the history of innovation’s buzzword status for The Atlantic, outlining the word’s evolution from ye olde accusation to modern-day compliment. She found that, even as it had evolved to adopt a more positive sentiment, innovation was still largely devoid of meaning for a large swath of society:
“What has been achieved, however, is a greater ability to manipulate information, which has an outsized affect on the lives and work of a relatively small segment of the population. These people happen to be the folks that spend the most time talking about innovation, though: journalists and academics.
That same year, former intelligence analyst and consultant company founder, Michael O’Bryan, wrote for Wired that,
“Innovation has become the new buzzword, but its overuse and generalization has caused more instances of eye rolling than actual innovation.”
Those in Silicon Valley who are not part of the heady rush of startup investment and jockeying or who work for older companies that have been wrapping themselves tightly in the innovation mantle, roll their eyes when the word is mentioned.
Innovation is meaningless, they sigh.
Except it’s not.
Just as the current mood is shifting in the wake of the election, so are expectations of companies and organizations that are claiming to be innovative. It will no longer be acceptable to slap a label of innovation on iteration. Activities that qualify will be in areas such as housing, transportation, currency and banking and interpersonal connection. It will no longer be acceptable to claim that a company is innovative if it is not working on the most dire problems we face, problems such as homelessness, widespread hunger and malnutrition and energy consumption.
Artificial intelligence and machine learning are nice. They will be dismissed as nothing more than technological wizardry however, if the machines aren’t better behaved than we are when it comes to such things as unconscious bias awareness, inclusion and equity. It will be a true innovation if we can train machines to outperform the average human in these areas.
Innovations in banking will make financial decisions simpler and grow financial inclusion. Innovative companies, in general, will make hiring and relevant training inextricably linked as they grow their robotic workforce. They will open up the job market to people who, out of necessity, must pivot to their second, third or even fourth careers as their prior training becomes obsolete.
The future is never certain, but it is well within our power to shape it. The work of shaping the future depends heavily on the stories we tell about it. That means the words we use to tell those stories matter. Innovation is a critically important word in the shaping of those narratives. It is far more significant than a welcome mat to investors or even an umbrella term for a set of skills. It is a signal to the wider public that an individual, team, organization, corporation or entity is dedicated to upholding human values and advancing society with more than an eye on equity but real action and investment in it. Innovation must be synonymous with looking beyond the immediate intrigue of a technology to its broader social impact. That means innovation as we’ve known it must end.
I run a consultancy at the crossroads of human-centered design, media, policy and professional development. I recently gave a TEDx talk on the need for a marriage of design and unconscious bias in professional development and media training.
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