Innovation Is Executive Porn

When executives take off their glasses and pinch their eyes shut in that "I'm thoughtful" pose, they're picturing themselves in a black turtleneck.

For that brief moment, they're on stage at the unveiling of their next masterpiece. They glance backstage and see their approving mothers. They get an animated thumbs up from the supportive management consultant that did their hair. If they squint past the spotlights, they can see -- in the back of the stadium, in the nosebleed seats -- every person who ever rejected them, who made them feel alone and lonely, who didn't recognize them for the star they obviously are.

And just like that -- whoosh -- they open their eyes and they're executives again, listening to some awful presentation about god only knows what.

Innovation Is Obscenity

Like its fat cousin "leadership" (quotes intentional), the term innovation is so broadly defined that it has lost all meaning. Every leader is now an innovator and every new product -- and every new feature of that product -- deserves a ribbon. Yay! Ribbons for everyone!

Fun exercise No. 1: Check out this Google Trends chart comparing the words leadership and innovation. Spooky how the two rise and fall in lockstep, no? Compare that to the chart for the words leader and innovator. My completely unscientific takeaway is that for every 1,000 leaders in the world, there is 1 innovator. And that's generous.

Fun exercise No. 2: Add the term "innovative design" to your Google News feed. The PR wire becomes so very entertaining with your first daily sip of hot beverage. Mornings in my house are now filled with sarcasm, yes, but also -- at least once each day -- with the well-deserved start of a slow clap. "The LG G2 has an innovative rear button design?!? Bravo, LG. Bravo.

Clap.

Here's the thing about innovation: I'm not sure any of us needs a definition. We don't need a journalist to tell us what it is. Or who really gets it.

Innovation is like obscenity: We know it when we see it. It's hard to miss when paradigms shift.

So no one is fooling anyone with all the press releases and internal memos. All we're doing is sending another cool word to the literary junk pile. The one I regret the most: the cloud. Poetry lost something the day some marketer stole that word.

And that, by the way, is why as a writer I never use my favorite words: I don't want to risk something that I write accidentally going viral and then overhearing my HR partner use the word "sublime" in a hushed tone. "I think it means 'half a lime.'"

Innovation Promotes Short-Term Gratification

Given my role in Big, I meet with aspiring entrepreneurs pretty regularly. Very often they bring their loaves of sliced bread, their technology prototypes. And many times, as they pitch their "greatest thing since," they forget that the loaf itself isn't the innovation; the manufacture of it is.

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Having the idea of sliced bread isn't compelling. Anyone can showcase one loaf. All you need is a knife.

Technology prototypes must demonstrate scale and stability, adaptability and adoptability -- scars that come only from the long, hard road to commercialization.

As I sit with those entrepreneurs, I can't help but think about why Big struggles with innovation. Where's the disconnect?

At first, I thought that what's missing in the corporate environment is the role played by venture capitalists. The one that says "I have an appetite for risk."

But then I remember that Big loves risk. We learn exactly how much each time a bubble bursts.

What Big lacks isn't appetite; it's character. And values. Specifically, patience. Big isn't engineered to wait for slow cooked food, and the creative process takes time. The path to commercialization takes even longer.

Big's timeframes are driven by quarterly reports and analysts' expectations, by unreasonably short windows to prove value as a management team and annual bonus cycles. That reality skews Big's expectations around innovation.

And that is why the innovation industrial complex produces fast food -- innovation in a can, with loads of salt, sugar and fat.

Speaking of which ...

Innovation Supports A Filthy Industry

I'm looking at you, hbr.org! No one has called you out for a while, or if they have it was in that syrupy academic tone that first validates your intellect.

I despise you. You're scientists in the same way that chiropractors are doctors. Your case studies are the new statistics (as in "lies, damn lies and...").

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