Jonathan – totally spot on – the single biggest thing the BBC did to be more innovative? Stopped sending cease and desist letters and started sending emails saying – wanna work with us?

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But my blog
is bigger.

I hate it when companies say they’re going to be more innovative. The innovation is already there, it just needs to be allowed to surface.

Relaxing policies, changing culture and removing barriers to experimentation are what’s needed, not telling everyone to be more innovative.

I have just discovered a new excuse for falling asleep in meetings and have innovated with respect to my duties.

Man that was a hard day’s work – need a sleep.

1. a. The action of innovating; the introduction of novelties; the alteration of what is established by the introduction of new elements or forms.

For that to make sense you need the verb to innovate:
1. trans. To change (a thing) into something new; to alter; to renew. Obs. (rare after 1750.)
2. To bring in (something new) the first time; to introduce as new. Obs. exc. in Comm.
3. intr. To bring in or introduce novelties; to make changes in something established; to introduce innovations. Sometimes const. on or upon (also with indirect passive). spec. in Comm.

3 is tautological and not helpful, but if you look at these, they boil down to “introducing something into a situation where it is considered new for that situation”.

ie specifically the introduction of a new method/etc into a situation that did not previously have that thing. eg introducing wikis into an organisation that didn’t use them is innovation.

As a result, you can then have a clear sequence of research, development and innovation, in a business context:
* research : the creation of something genuinely new – an advancement of knowledge/technology.
* development : the process of taking that pure/applied research and making it useable/reusable
* innovation : the introduction of developments into the business

It’s worth noting that you can skip the development stage if research is handed off to developmental partners, and that innovation can draw on both internal and external research/developments. (indeed, it should, since good research does the same)

Incidentally, this does mean that a marketer is talking complete sphericals if they say “This is a true innovation”, because it isn’t one unless it gets introduced into a business in terms of actual use/deployment. They can say it’s something new, which may or may not be true. They can say it’s an advancement of state of the art/the latest development, which may or may not be true. But unless they’ve deployed it into a specific environment where it is actually new, then it’s not innovation, it’s just a toy and maybe shiny.

I suppose this boils down to “have I found this new thing useful”.

So there’s something hard and useful underneath all the guff, I think, but Sweet Jesus there isn’t half a great big fuckton of guff and balls and emptiness and vacuity concealing it.

I don’t hate innovation as much as I hate compelling, is basically what I’m saying. Compelling is creepy and stupid. Innovation is a good word that’s got trapped inside the golden cage of professional arseholes.