schneiderism

He said that innovation is dead:

“Innovation” died in 2008, killed off by overuse, misuse, narrowness, incrementalism and failure to evolve. It was done in by CEOs, consultants, marketeers, advertisers and business journalists who degraded and devalued the idea by conflating it with change, technology, design, globalization, trendiness, and anything “new.” It was done in by an obsession with measurement, metrics and math and a demand for predictability in an unpredictable world. The concept was also done in, strangely enough, by a male-dominated economic leadership that rejected the extraordinary progress in “uncertainty planning and strategy” being done at key schools of design that could have given new life to “innovation. To them, “design” is something their wives do with curtains, not a methodology or philosophy to deal with life in constant beta—life in 2009.”

Bruce Nussbaum from “Innovation” is Dead. Herald The Birth of “Transformation” as a Key Concept in 2009

References to Nussbaum’s innovation obit and quotes from the article began shooting around immediately after it was published on December 31st. Unfortunately, most chose to focus on only part of what he is saying, the part that definitely stood to stir people up, that innovation is dead. Here’s the deal, though. Saying something is “dead”, especially after building your career, reputation, and personal brand on being an expert in it, is definitely theatrical, and certain to raise a great many eyebrows as we all thought that saying something is “dead” was itself finally dead. But he’s right. While innovation is still, and always will be, a hugely valued quality/culture/mindset in individuals and organizations, it is not enough. Innovation isn’t dead, of course it isn’t, but as a lone driver for tactics and strategy it just hasn’t been enough. Nussbaum quickly qualifies his statement by saying the challenges we now face, the uncertainty, and the reality of change mandates something broader to help us navigate these difficulties and come out the better for it. It’s “transformation” that we need to put our collective sights on, and innovation is a significant component of this transformation, though it is just a component. He makes the very good point that focusing on innovation simply was not enough to get us through the insanity of 2008, and in many cases it was actually a myopic focus on innovation that got us into this mess of our own making.

I was very excited to see that, for Nussbaum, an important element missing from our focus on innovation has been the concept of “value creation”, something that I’ve written about many times before. He wraps it up very succinctly:

“Most importantly, “Transformation” accepts the notion that we are in a post-consumer society, defined by two groups of economic players: manufacturers and consumers. “Transformation” deals with a new Creativity Society, in which we are all both producers and consumers of value. Look around and you can see Gen Y in particular creating practically from birth, mashing music, designing Facebook or MySpace pages, doing videos and podcasts—creating value.”

Innovation is dead. Long live innovation.