Once upon a time, I hosted a dinner at H&P on the topic of ‘innovation.’ We invited people we knew through our own networks who were starters of businesses, makers of things, dabblers in ideas, creators of stuff. We told them we chose them because they were actively engaged in ‘making’ and ‘new.’ We had a great group of people – here are a few of them:
- one of Charlie Rose‘s producers, who at the time was responsible for developing a series on future newsmakers
- Benny Rietveld, a professional musician (touring bassist with Santana, among many other accolades) and the producer of a beautifully produced film about what goes in to being a guitar player – not just a guy on a stool playing chords, but a real meditation on creativity and music and spirit
- Doug Jaeger, who at the time was running a shop called thehappycorp and doing great, subversive, immersive, co-creative things with brands and people and is currently president of the Art Directors Club
- Meghan Keane, a staff writer, editor, contributor to the NY Sun, Wired, Reason, The Awl, and on and on (and why, I ask, does she not have a website I can easily discover? Stalk her @keanesian on twitter. It’s brill.)
- Jason Olim, founder of CDNOW, and now of the Freshman Fund, and in general a fascinating, pragmatic and prolific entrepreneur
- Jonah Keegan, formerly of the Freshman Fund, and basically a genius who I think sort of pioneered the word cloud
- Stephen Tasker, an engineer and designer of juvenile furniture
- And there’s more, but I’m blanking on names and feeling very bad about myself as a result
A few interesting things emerged straight away – a definition of the word ‘innovation’ is tough to come by. And our group of people felt that it was irrelevant. They were interested in problem-solving, experimenting, prototyping, not ‘innovating.’ They even balked at the moniker of ‘innovators.’ They were passionate about bringing together interesting people to solve interesting problems and figuring out a way to turn that solution into a business or business model.
And they were right – despite some of my colleagues’ best efforts, pinning down a definition of ‘innovation’ or ‘innovative’ is a silly exercise, and one that keeps you from the essential point. Noah Brier was talking about a process that is like this the other day (or at least, this is the picture in my head):
I have begun to think that often what we mean when we say ‘innovation’ – especially when we use it as a noun – is ‘invention.’ And invention, to my way of thinking, happens at that inflection point between having a problem and not knowing of or having an available solution. No readily apparent device, app, service, etc. to fix my situation? I’ll fix it myself. Innovation then is the routinizing of the invention, and diffusion is basically what happens when you apply it broadly, and sell it. This is my interpretation, anyway.
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Today, Ad Age’s Creativity put out its list of the 2010 Creativity 50. There are some expected people/brands in here; and then there are a few surprises. These are people who, in other contexts would be described as ‘innovators.’ Creativity just calls them creative. I think this is probably for the best.
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Even bobulate had something to say about the overuse of the word (or the misuse of the word) ‘innovative’ – basically, stop it. Be clear about what you mean when you want to use the word innovative, and say that instead. She linked to a nice, concise piece on the perils of overusing the word via The Economist, called “Stop Saying Innovation“. It’s worth a quick read.
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Actually, this makes me think of something I used to do. I used to tell Ed Madrid that I loved him. Constantly. Every few minutes throughout the day. And we would sometimes spend 25 hours a day together. I would, in varying tones and accents, say, “Ed, I love you.” He hated it. He told me that I was devaluing the concept of love. I knew that this was true, but I also knew that I totally did love him because the man is a freakin’ pop culture icon and artist and genius. There were actually two things I did that creeped him out: tell him I loved him, and continue typing for paragraphs while making direct eye contact with him when he spoke to me.
Anyway, I digress – the point is, don’t overuse this term. It’s sloppy, and it devalues things that really are innovative.