Innova-Sutra

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Don’t you think that a persistent part of today’s social communication patterns is that we are aggressively attacked by buzzwords that are infinitely generated and disseminated with the intent to attract our attention? Contemporary Alladins of public relations keep using them as incantations to open the sesames’ of our minds. I’m sure you do!

Some of us may even think it’s not only about attracting; it’s about buying our attention because attention has become one of the most precious commodities in the world overwhelmed by various types of competing media that constantly broadcast ‘something’ and ‘new something’ and ‘new-new something’. I’m afraid that usually the deal when we give our attention in return for some words that shine of novelty or carry out fuzzy promises is a Faustian bargain. Why? Because these perpetualy repeated terms have been emptied of serious meaning and converted into slogans, platitudes, and misleading shortcuts. Incidentally, the market of trendy trite phrases is really voluminous and grows: it sweeps through politics, journalism, management and marketing, economic analysis and consultancy business, obviously through commercials, and less obviously and regretfully through vocational training and education. You can find a lot of that on internet web pages, too; hopefully, not on our page of ICST.

Most likely, you have your own collection of clichés, slogans, and chestnuts that you have picked up from quotidian discourses. Mine accounts for nearly 100 items. Now, let me grab two of them. Here they are: innovation and innovativeness!

Let me explain why innovation is on my list. Obviously, innovation is a real thing with a horizontal impact across technology, manufacturing, business, finance, administration, etc. Perhaps it will be, or even already is, a dominant and/or defining feature of the emerging new capitalism. This point undoubtedly deserves a substantive pondering. The reason however why this term has supplied my list of buzzwords is threefold, namely:

1.      The term is evidently and ostensibly overused.
Circumstantial evidence: some 155,000,000 hits were received by means of Google against the query “innovation OR innovativeness”! This result still cannot surpass 1,660,000,000 hits generated by “money”; yet, it is impressive and indicative enough.

2.      It is commonplace to mistake innovation with invention.
Note that innovativeness consists in a new use of the existing techniques, technologies and/or devices to set up new solutions, goods, services or processes. Inventiveness, however, is different for it is aimed at creating entirely new things that have not existed so far. Innovativeness can be managed, inventiveness cannot! A spectacular case of innovativeness is when Winston Churchill while being the First Lord of Admiralty in 1911 caused the transition of the Royal Navy from coal to oil, which according to many historians significantly contributed to the British success on the sea and to defeating the Kaiserliche Marine.

3.      A quite popular opinion says that innovation is mainly about having a great new idea. The rest is just (!) execution. Yet, the experience tells us that a good idea is only some 10 percent of the innovation to happen; the rest is a painful and tedious process of its implementation through trails and errors, managerial struggles, and pervasive stress, all heavily loaded with uncertainty. Vijay Govindarajan and Chris Trimble in their recently published book entitled “The Other Side of Innovation: Solving the Execution Challenge” have provided us with a bunch of convincing examples to debunk the myth of innovation as a “great new idea”.   

Indeed, to elaborate a bit on point 3 one can say that innovativeness, in addition to having a new concept, is mainly about a lot of tinkering, trying new combinations and setups. Look: who could deny that making love is a good idea? Undoubtedly, it is even a “great idea”, but a novice in order to be inspired on new “executional experiences” needs … a “Kamasutra”. By analogy, I argue that innovativeness needs something similar, a sort of “Innova-Sutra”.

May I hope then that the title of this essay, Innova-Sutra, will soon become a next buzzword, a new mem that you will start disseminating?

Incidentally, should you like to share with me your set of buzzwords, threadbare phrases, and trite remarks and get my collection in return, please contact me at mietek@n-s.pl

About the Authors

Mieczysław Muraszkiewicz

Editor in Chief, ICaST and Head of the Information Systems Division at the University of Warsaw

Professor, Head of Information Systems Division, University of Warsaw, author of over 110 publications and 80 technical reports.

Jan Kaczmarek