Empty Innovation Claims
Innovation is now universally accepted "good thing" for business, just like profitability. As a result, consultants can justify a recommendation just by saying it will be good for innovation. A more important but less accepted business value is transparency...
Peterme.com: Quack! Some thoughts on DUX07 and the State of User Experience. 2007-11-10, by Peter Merholz
While I’m only partly pleased with my talk (forming a clear, concise thesis escaped me), I’m (perhaps smugly self-) satisfied with its effect. See, in my talk, I railed against “innovation,” and encouraged the audience to throw things at speakers who used that word. (Why? Because “innovation” has become well-nigh meaningless in its overuse, and it’s the word that designers latch onto in order to be relevant in a business context.) Over the next two and a half days, numerous speakers caught themselves as they uttered the term, and I felt that this really pointed out a challenge in our discourse. I believe it’s productive to question the term “innovation,” because it forces people to say what they really mean.
