Are you innovating, inventing, optimizing, or creating art?

The business world is suffering from jargon monoxide poisoning. Pollutants include words like “sustainable,” “blockchain,” and, most egregious, “innovation.”

The rate at which “innovation” spouts from half-baked mission statements is unsustainable. One day very soon, when we see the word “innovation,” our eyes will decide, nah, the brain can sit this one out. It will become a meaningless cliché. If it hasn’t already.

How did we get here? Delusions of grandeur. As Leslie Kwoh wrote in the Wall Street Journal, companies “are using the word to convey monumental change when the progress they’re describing is quite ordinary.” That was more than seven years ago. The epidemic was only worsened.

For most companies, newness alone qualifies slapping an innovation sticker on their product. Such thinking cheapens real innovations — the printing press, vaccines, Louis Pasteur’s relationship with milk. Yes, they were new, but, more importantly, they solved problems and created value.

Which brings us to a very useful definition of innovation, courtesy of Tom Dwyer:

“Innovation is the process of creating value by applying novel solutions to meaningful problems.”

The “innovation” isn’t novel? Perhaps it is optimization.
The “innovation” doesn’t solve a meaningful problem? Perhaps it is art.
The “innovation” doesn’t create value? Perhaps it is an invention.

Let’s do a little innovation test by running four recent products or services through Dwyer’s framework:

Electric vehicle batteries

You might be surprised to learn that in the late 19th century electric cars and gasoline cars competed side-by-side to replace horses on the road. Gas-powered vehicles prevailed heading into the 20th century largely because they were cheaper, faster, and went further than their counterparts, powered by lead-acid batteries. Thanks to lithium ion batteries, cost, range, and speed now no longer hold electric vehicles back from contending in the market.

Verdict: Optimization

TikTok

TikTok is woven by the same thread as Instagram, Snapchat, Vine and Dubsmash before it, so it isn’t particularly novel. Does it create value? Again, tricky. It does for content creators, albeit by monetizing our attention. It wasn’t designed to solve a meaningful problem but, rather, to simply provide entertainment.

Verdict: Art

Google Glass

If you expect customers to strap a screen to their face, it better be a damn great product. Google Glass was not that. Plus, privacy was having a bit of a moment (Edward Snowden blew the whistle on the NSA shortly before Glass hit the market). Unfortunate timing and underwhelming tech is a recipe for innovation.

Verdict: Invention

Lab-grown meat

Cellular agriculture is booming in response to the moral and environmental consequences of livestock farming. Novel? Check. Does it solve a meaningful problem? You bet. Does it create value? Hell yes. A true innovation.

Verdict: Innovation

With this exercise in mind, think about some of the products and services you use on a regular basis which were called “innovative” when they first came out. Many are probably not. And that’s fine.

We’re not making this point to discredit inventions, or optimization, or art. Or, God forbid, to make room for the next fad word (that’s what the Bullshit Generator is for). No, we want to restore agency to ‘innovation’. So that, as the author and speaker Scott Berkun says, it is no longer “a chameleon-like word to hide lack of substance.”

Let’s treat ‘innovation’ like ‘irregardless’ — think twice before using it and call out its abuse.

No BS is an innovation studio that uses the design sprint to help companies solve real challenges, design meaningful products & services, and develop mindful user and customer experiences. We have created products & services for startups, companies, and NGOs operating in health tech, mobility, food tech, artificial intelligence, blockchain, mindfulness, fitness, and many other industries.

Visit us at nobsstudio.com