Can I just say, that sometimes, I feel like I’m in Pee Wee’s playhouse when I’m reading some random blog entry, design observer, or the latest McK Quarterly and I see the word “innovation“. All the fun creatures and puppets in the playhouse start screaming and yelling around me and I become anxious and excited at the same time. (Kinda how I got when I was in the workshop late at night in Foundation working on product design)
Everyone’s always calling stuff innovation that isn’t really innovation.. Err is it? We need more words to define the now, quite broad sphere that “innovation” seems to encompass.
Why on God’s great earth does it matter? Well, because classification can be important. Classification yields findability and associativeness. There are long rants written frequently about semantics in the design world. Is it Innovation? Is it Design? Maybe it’s just Design thinking? So, then it’s Tempered Optimism then? It’s confusing and obfuscated even to practitioners — Imagine what this might be like to potential clients?
Until I figure this out, I’m going to start interjecting other words in sentences instead of using the word innovation. So, if you hear me toss around Human-centered platypus or The 10 Types of Gorillas dear reader, you know what I mean. *wink*
you’re right, this word does get overused. alex pointed this out with a great example the other day. the cynic in me feels that this is part of someone’s (or everyone’s?) attempt to own and capitalize on the word/process/act. examples abound.
but personally, i don’t think random names are the answer either. “innovation” is something that people just do and have done for thousands of years. it’s how we got where we are today, for better or worse. it seems to me that it’s becoming a big word now for two reasons. first, people want to “harness” this organic thing into something that can be efficiently reproduced because we think that faster is always better (and generates more profit). second, our education system is strip mining this ability out of ourselves and our kids and we think this left-brained approach to optimization is the way to restore it.
but like you, i don’t have an answer yet. maybe there isn’t one anyways, and we’re just wasting pixels. all i have right now is the aspiration to respect people’s ability to learn and adapt (maybe that’s a better word than “innovate”) to the world. i mean, we’ve forced the world to adapt to us for long enough ..