Innovation Abuse: a case study
I’ve written before that we’d all be better off if people stopped saying Innovation. Calling something innovative doesn’t make it so – it’s just a word, a word that’s been abused to the point it has almost no meaning. History bears out many creative and successful organizations rarely use that word at all. They don’t need to. It’s often people who want to seem special, or creative, or productive, who use that word as a mask for their insecurities.
Recently I got unrequested email about a site called Innovation management. On their front page alone I counted more than 7o uses of the word. What a disappointment. It defeats their own purpose.
It’s not a surprise that the site seems designed to push PDF articles for sale, articles I presume, based on the site, suffer from an inability to use the age old innovation called a thesaurus.
Brilliant.
You could say: innovative.
For a site that’s pushing innovation the look of it most certainly is neither innovative or attractive. It’s a shame, that used to be a good word, too. Now it’s just ‘all worn out’.
Haha… will probably do wonders for their SEO :-)
The National Institutes of Health actually requires that every grant application for research funding contain an entire section entitled “Innovation”, in which the applicant is supposed to explain exactly how the proposed research is “innovative”. And then in peer review, one of the five scored criteria that must be graded by each reviewer is “Innovation”. You wouldn’t believe the hilarious shitte that people claim is “innovative”!