"Business Weak" on Innovation

Because we’re human, many fields of endeavor produce people and ideas that acquire almost mythic and magical powers. We must, therefore, faithfully adhere to their dictates even when every outward sign indicates these idols may be irrelevant, mistaken, or worse. It is, after all, a test of conviction.

In economics one such god is the free market whose “invisible hand” some people worship as though they believe (and a few even assert) it to be God’s hand. In management literature one such god is “innovation”, which some suggest is the sufficient and perhaps indispensable means to prosperity and growth. For them, innovation is a deity to which all businesses must continually sacrifice (i.e. invest) especially when times are tough – like a craps player doubling down when he’s on a losing streak.

Thus “Business Week” magazine instructs businesses in the “Ten Worst Innovation Mistakes in a Recession” which include:
· Reduce risk
· Shift evaluations away from rewarding riskier projects toward sustaining safer older goals
· Cut back on investments in technology
And, of course:
· Replace innovation as a key strategy

All this, if you’ve read and followed the prescriptions of BW in times good and bad, amounts to, “Stay the course”. An odd admonition when the economy and many companies are in the midst of economic meltdown . . .the sort of thing that in the unfaithful and conventional might inspire a desire to reduce exposure, preserve resources, and generally step in out of the tsunami.

This belief in innovation as indispensable to success is odd in one respect. Whereas Christian dogma instructs us that all faithful believers can aspire to heaven, the innovationists, in their admiration for their champions, regularly remind us how exceptional and rare those champions -- true innovators -- are. And they’re right! Innovation . . . the creation or significant improvement of products or services or of the organizations that deliver them . . . is rare unless one is willing to dilute the meaning of the term to encompass any change, however trivial, that produces positive results. Companies do not and should not invest in triviality.

In fact, we live and work in a marketplace in which a few innovate and the many assimilate and disseminate. To cite for the gazillionth time the “Lake Woebegone Effect”, not everybody can be above average and it can be reckless and self-destructive for businesses to think and invest as though they can be when the prospects for producing an innovation . . . at least one of significance . . . may be small.

Most businesses are not, by any meaningful definition of the term, highly innovative and most, even in economies such as this, will survive and a few will prosper as has always been the case.