My favorite lie in the pro sports world is "It's not about the money." That little gem is uttered with unfortunate regularity by star athletes insulted by their team's $20 million offer, as they pack their bags for a new team offering $32.5 million.

There's a place where that same line does carry quite a bit of truth. Yet lately, some would have us believe that it's all about the money, or lack thereof. It's the world of business and technology innovation.

Earlier this summer, one national business magazine ran a big story headlined "Innovation Drought." The publication bemoaned the plummeting levels of venture capital funding in the wake of the dot-com implosion, with lots of quotes from would-be entrepreneurs about great ideas withering on the vine. That magazine is hardly alone in its contention; it seems to be quite a pervasive view that no VC money equals no startups equals no innovation.

I don't mean to suggest there's no connection between financing and the development of innovative products and services. In any company with a reputation for innovation, from 3M to Intel to GE, you'll find healthy R&D budgets and above-average levels of venture investments. But at the same time, those companies don't measure their innovation results strictly by how much money they've poured into them.

Great ideas don't come from eight-figure VC funding rounds. They come from bright, talented, and inspired people thinking creatively and solving problems. That process shouldn't come to a screeching halt in tough economic times. Did Leonardo da Vinci depend on the Renaissance equivalent of Kleiner Perkins to keep his ideas flowing? I think not.

Let's look at the other side of this--the so-called Golden Days of Innovation that gave us all those (formerly) flush, well-funded startups of the past three years. What's so fabulously innovative and entrepreneurial about being the 500th application service provider (that's a Gartner number, not my writer's hyperbole) getting funded to enter the market? Whether you're the venture capitalist or the CEO, there's nothing very creative about tweaking a me-too business model and chasing the same market as everyone else. That's what happened with ASPs, business-to-business marketplaces, Web personalization software, and a dozen other industry segments. That's not innovation in my book.

Many people have a very narrow view of where innovation comes from. The image of the classic entrepreneur--the college dropout in a Silicon Valley garage hatching a technology and an idea and a company worth billions--dominates the popular culture. The image got updated in the late 1990s to the business school dropout in a San Francisco loft, with a door on sawhorses for a desk, launching a Web startup that would change the world and go public in 15 months.

Let me offer another image: a middle-aged attorney from San Antonio, who scribbled a new business idea on a cocktail napkin in the 1970s. All he did was start a company that went against every sacred rule about what was needed to run a successful airline, whether it be hub-and-spoke routing plans or assigned seating or first class service for business travelers willing to pay high fares. Maybe Herb Kelleher didn't change the world with Southwest Airlines, but he built the only consistently profitable company in the history of his industry and changed the dynamics of the U.S. airline business forever.

Is that innovative enough?

Southwest is known as fiscally conservative, but it doesn't pull in its horns and stop generating new ideas when jet fuel costs soar or a weak economy knocks down travel spending. One can argue, of course, that innovation and creative ideas are more important in tough times. But you can't suddenly foster that attitude within a corporate culture that believes innovation is only encouraged and rewarded when the bottom line is healthy. Creativity should no know season or industry downturn. And as Paccar Inc. CIO Patrick Flynn said in InformationWeek earlier this year, it's the better ideas with greater ROI potential that will get the funding when funds are scarce.

Perhaps the world's best icon of innovation in tough times is New York City's Empire State Building. It wasn't only the world's tallest building for four decades. It was a leading-edge marvel of new architectural and construction techniques, with 102 stories completed in the mind-boggling span of 14 months. Its builders broke amazing new ground in materials transportation, moving steel beams and girders from Pittsburgh foundries so quickly that they arrived in Manhattan still warm to the touch. Talk about supply-chain innovation.

The Empire State Building was constructed during 1930 and 1931, the onset of the Great Depression. So if you're waiting for the economy to pick up so you can afford new ideas and new initiatives, think about that. It's not always about the money.