What Happened to Innovation

This started out as a simple post but quickly grew into something bigger and Linkedin said it was too big for a simple post so I made it an article instead. I had a mountain bike crash, I'm sore and recovering. Probably due to lack of sleep from welcoming the new addition to the family, a little girl. So I am home, baking and cooking, which I do to de-stress. The wife doesn't mind, she said it was a bonus she wasn't aware of when she married me. But cooking is a good time to just think, in my opinion.

I saw someone post on Linkedin about the most innovative companies in 2020. Apple and Google topped the list, again. I really can’t think of anything innovative that made me say “wow” from either of these companies in a quite a while. It reminded me of a comment from a modern contemporary philosopher that as a society we have stopped innovating for the last 20 years, culturally. I think data and tech is going the same way.

One of the key attributes of our time is the inability to define itself with a key set of intellectual ideals. The use of data and the very definition of data is no different. The time period we living in since the year 2000 has been one of profound surface level change. That change in the field of data appears to come at us hard and fast. Yet it is just surface level noise, for the most part. Just like pop culture, the changes we see are rather stale and stagnant, on the fundamental level. 

In the 20th century, you could pretty much tell the decade of a movie or a song just by a few seconds of watching or listening, the changes we experienced were more fundamental then. Since 2000, the changes are more surface level. A song from 2020 is pretty much like a song from 2015 or 2010 or 2005. A recommender algorithm from 2005, is basically the same today. New back-end tools but basically the same thing. It’s time to get back to real fundamental change and growth. I’m tired of seeing a new phone with a new camera or color being called innovation, that’s not innovation, that’s cosmetic. Making a new recommender with a new tech tool is not innovation, that’s cosmetic. Coming up with a new way for people to engage beyond recommenders and take us in a new radical, exciting and empowering way of engagement, that’s innovation.

The hard work of real fundamental innovation just isn’t being done by many. And when it comes to data, the arrogance by many doing surface level change, is strong. It was quite telling, that I had two network chats recently and people said I was quite humble, for someone who works in data. One said that most come off as know-it-alls. I don’t know it all, and I am well aware of that. The level of information and detail is so much these days, nobody could know it all. For the last three years I have talked about data philosophy and the sneers I get from those that want to only talk math, are quite telling. I’m focused on fundamental change and innovation, not surface level. So of course, I’m looking at what would be called radical ideas because I have been there and done that and I know the surface level change only gets you so far. 

The 21st century is screaming for a purpose and meaning. The allure of a new phone every year is gone. Posting our lunch for the world to see, has lost it’s meaning. Many are seeing that living a digital life is not a life of meaning. How do I help people gain more substance to their life? That’s the question we should be asking. Instead the debates are around R vs Python or Cloud or on-prem. Utterly meaningless in the bigger picture. If you want to really impact change, you have to go find the fundamentals and that’s not something you will find in a data science course. But any company that understands how to seek and apply fundamentals around data use for the coming shifts is where to be. And it won’t be the FAANG’s.