Our Love Affair with Innovation

"Real development is not leaving things behind, as on a road, but drawing life from them, as from a root." ---G. K. Chesterton

Each generation has its totems. In the 1950s, we worshipped ideas. We wrote of the “marketplace of ideas,” celebrating capitalism’s ability to turn the “the best new ideas” into gold. Ideas were revered like some ancient god empowered to make even the meekest inherit the earth. 

Today, we idolize “innovation.” Still somewhat uncertain as to the philosophical definition of the term, we teach seminars in innovation, hold panel programs celebrating innovation, repeat mantras such as “innovate or die” and, all the while, we have no clear end goal for our “innovation” or concrete method for creating innovation. We only have the ritual call, the endlessly repeated lecture telling us we must do this if we are to live in the future.

Of course, the one concrete fact we have regarding innovation is that the vast majority of innovation fails and most that succeeds almost inevitably fails in the end. On the road of innovation, Betamax and its competitor VHS, Atari, ms-dos, Commodore Amiga, myspace, RIMM, Microsoft Zunes, and countless other one-time leaders are now innovation roadkill. Of course, we typically say that each of these did not keep up with the flow of traffic on the innovation highway. But, this paints a false historical picture. Many of these were never intended to “keep up.” 

VHS, for instance, was never meant to become the prime source for recorded entertainment unto the end of time. It was meant to sell product on the current market. The thing that mattered most to the creators and marketers of these “innovative” products was that each was, on some level, immensely successful within its social context.

G. K. Chesterton was fond of saying that a painting was defined by its frame. Innovation is similarly defined by its social context. Success seldom comes to those who create the first or best “innovation.” Success inevitably comes to those who can fit the innovated product most effectively to the contemporary market. Success comes to those who recognize the limitations of the market, the interests of the market, and modify the message of the product to fit that market.

Famously, Windows 95 was cobbled together to copy the (far better) Apple Mac operating system. It was inferior to the Apple system. But, Microsoft succeeded in populating nearly every non-Apple personal computer with the Windows OS. They nearly drove Apple into bankruptcy.

Apple’s financial savior, the iPod, was not the first MP3 player. However, it was the first to build a market brand that created a sense of personal ownership for users. From iPod to iTunes to My Playlist, the entire rhetorical structure of the iPod created a language of almost solipsistic ownership of memory for purchasers.  Several hundred megabytes (later gigabytes) of space were redefined as personal space possessed by the product’s owners. This fantasized ownership of digital space has become the defining mythology of smartphones and social media. The innovation wasn’t technological. It was rhetorical. It was language choice.

Aristotle wrote that the key to successful public communication was the ability to find in any situation the available means of persuasion. Again and again, we’ve seen this proven true---in the success of Windows as the “universal” OS, in the success of the iPod and its progeny as your “personal space,” in the success of VHS then DVD then blu-ray and online digital in becoming the new platform of my library of movies and tv shows (something that did not exist before VHS). Successful “innovation” came to those who found, in their social environment, the means to persuade the largest portion of the public that their product was THE product, the product that mattered, the product you needed to own lest you fall behind in the technological race. Success continues to be created by those who most effectively create a rhetorical vision of necessary novelty for their audiences. It turns out that Aristotle was right, all along.

If you want to talk about innovation, chase innovation, pray to innovation, attend your local innovation event and enjoy. If you want to innovate, read the classics. Read Aristotle and Plato and (yes) Shakespeare. Read the literature that lasts. Literature lasts because it teaches us about ourselves. It shows us the persistent patterns of human behavior, the qualities that define us. In showing us the perspectives and orientations we share as human beings, lasting literature can teach us the ways in which we can mold a technological tool into a symbolic message that speaks to us all.

Innovation isn’t something new. Real innovation is as old as human thought.