

Why 'innovation' needs to take a step back - cguess
http://ijnet.org/en/blog/why-innovation-needs-take-step-back

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vezzy-fnord
I agree, except for:

 _There are many, many examples of recent innovations that were absolutely
necessary. The advent of mobile applications for newspapers truly changed the
game._

 _...Twitter... — these are innovations that truly changed the media world._

Nope.

Mobile applications for newspapers aren't innovative. It's a generic type of
application that happens to run on a widely available platform - which, in of
itself, is not innovative either.

Twitter is not innovative either, because its impact is not related to the
product itself, but its widespread adoption. The actual application is
relatively basic, the infrastructure backing it aside. Now, one could retort
that it's a "media innovation", not a technical one. But then the term becomes
diluted, as just about anything widely used becomes an "innovation" in that it
almost logically changes how something is done to that end. It becomes a
truism.

Basically, if it can be boiled down to "Something... but on a computer", then
it's most likely not innovative.

For _actual_ examples of technical innovations, see this David A. Wheeler
essay:
[http://www.dwheeler.com/innovation/innovation.html](http://www.dwheeler.com/innovation/innovation.html).

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p00b
This definitely plays well with an idea I've pontificated on for a long time,
to the dismay/annoyance of my close friends and colleagues.

The thought is simply that the process of iconifying anything (words, people,
companies) inherently decouples the item from the original idea behind it.
This introduces a dangerous implication wherein the icon can then be re-
appropriated in support of literally any idea, including the antithesis of the
original idea this thing was supposed to represent.

Everything from "Disruptive Technology" to "Christian" to "ObamaCare" to
"Terrorist" (feel free to replace the last with Witch, Homosexual, Communist,
or an assortment of derogatory racial slurs, depending the era you're
discussing) is subject to this sort of propagandizing via the iconifying
process.

Scary stuff, and very important to notice and discuss now, before "Freedom of
Speech" becomes simply another of the icons.

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stackcollision
This and "disrupt", please.

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mfoy_
I think that if we, as a community, innovate on our rhetoric we can really
disrupt the overuse of "innovate" and "disrupt".

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hitchhiker999
Thank you for writing this down. There is so much bullcr*p in tech, and always
has been. It's false advertising and effectively devalues the entire industry.

