Is it innovation or is it just a good idea?

In modern business, there is often a belief in ‘innovate or die’. If your business isn’t innovating, it will slowly die out as it is outcompeted. Because of this, in many business settings, "innovative" is now used almost as a synonym for "good." To the extent that if you aren’t bringing something new to the table every quarter, then somehow you’ve failed as a business? And while I certainly do support that innovation is a vital part of long-term business success and should be considered by every business, it doesn’t mean that everything is innovation.

I want to argue that ideas can be good, laudable, valuable, worthy and beneficial without being innovative. Doing the right things for the right reasons, whether novel or not, should be celebrated. You can even argue (exceptionally easily) that innovative ideas done without consideration or moderation can actually do more harm than good. Innovative ≠ good, and good ≠ innovative

In a later post I will go into my reasoning for defining innovation this way, but I define it as this:

An innovation creates value for a group through the application of new insight and/or the application of  established insight in a new context

To me, to be innovative, the subject in question needs to have one or both of these qualities of novelty. New insight - knowledge, technology or understanding, or new context - operational environment, industry, sector, process, etc. Without one of these aspects of novelty, then to me it is a good idea but not an innovative one. If that makes you uncomfortable, then I want to challenge you: why? Why is good not good enough?

I once worked for a company that wholly believed installing a 3rd-party project management application in 2022 was an innovation. Was it a good idea? Most likely. Was it innovative? Absolutely not. I tried raising this point, but was told defensively: “Well, it is new to us, so it is innovation”. Catching up with what everyone else in your sector is doing isn’t innovative; it's good practice. Correcting this classification mattered for my job at the time; otherwise, splitting hairs might seem pointless in the grand scheme, but I think it highlights the need to label ideas as innovative, not just good.

If we look down on good ideas because they aren't novel, then it tells me we don’t value good ideas highly enough. Just because it has been done before doesn’t mean it doesn’t apply now. Is there no wisdom in learning from the past? Is there no tragedy in abandoning what has come before in favour of the unknown? Do not the patterns of history repeat themselves?

…The eye never has enough of seeing, nor the ear its fill of hearing. What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun. Is there anything of which one can say, “Look! This is something new”? It was here already, long ago; it was here before our time. No one remembers the former generations, and even those yet to come will not be remembered by those who follow them.

Ecclesiastes 1: 8b - 11

Do not misunderstand me: innovation is a good thing, and a core part of human society in the West. The belief that we can change the world, that it can be explored and known. The belief that we can obtain and apply knowledge is a vital part of my own Christian faith, but so is the understanding that some things are constant, unchanging and established. Balance in both embracing the established truths and wisdom of those who came before while seeking new revelation.

Reinvention can serve a powerful purpose to get out of difficult situations, but it can also destroy that which was already healthy. To make space for the new, we do have to let go of the old, and I think we need to do so with care and consideration, or we run the risk of making avoidable mistakes. What happens when we abandon mature technologies in favour of novel yet immature ones? Inevitably, we will encounter issues, and the knowledge to maintain mature technological redundancies has been lost.

An example that springs to mind in balancing these tensions is sailing. Several years ago, sea navigation used nothing but a compass, chart, and the stars. Vessels used sails almost exclusively. To this day, yacht sailing utilises more or less the same underlying principles, but the addition of technologies such as radar, radio, electric lights, emergency beacons, engines, water purifiers, GPS, and electronic charts has made this process more accessible, safer and easier, even if the underlying technologies (sails, stars, charts and compass) remain.

Let me know what you think. I'll be doing some more post around this topic over the coming weeks, so stay tuned.