"... it signified excessive novelty, without purpose or end. Edmund Burke called the French Revolution a 'revolt of innovation'; Federalists declared themselves to be 'enemies to innovation.' George Washington, on his deathbed, was said to have uttered these words: 'Beware of innovation in politics.' Noah Webster warned in his dictionary, in 1828, 'It is often dangerous to innovate on the customs of a nation.'"
From "The Disruption Machine/What the gospel of innovation gets wrong," an excellent New Yorker article by Jill Lepore.
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17 comments:
"...it signified excessive novelty, without purpose or end."
In my experience in the corporate world, that usually is what "innovation" still signifies, in practice, when it is invoked too frequently by senior management.
More often than not, the fetishization of the term sends the signal, "We're desperate, we have no idea what we are doing, and we have demoralized everyone in R&D."
Innovation. Leadership. Go to college. Succeed. Be happy. BELIEVE!
"Paging Leo Strauss... cleanup in aisle 76..."
Or: Work. Slog. Endure. Deal with the back pain. Accept that dreams are never going to be fulfilled, that everything is just what it is. Valar dohaires.
Maybe we all need a little Leo in our lives...
Jill Lepore's article turns her problems with Clayton Christensen's disruptive innovation scholarship into an indictment of innovation generally.
I doubt Jill Lepore holds much truck with Edmund Burke, and I'll bet the George Washington deathbed quote will turn out to be apocryphal.
There's a race to keep pace with the increasing rates of change due to technology on our culture and politics.
Best to start discrediting conservative ideas ahead of time to build your own case if you write for the New Yorker.
The code words Reform and reorganize are sold as a way to improvements by pols that want to seize power...for the best of reasons:They like power.
Also, lately, it might be best to turn down the volume.
if promoting green and maybe even red environmentalism, welcoming Piketty's political solutions, pushing diversity within the Leftist construct, and ever greater solidarity around feminist discontents is overplayed...and Obama is shrinking and you sense the winds have changed...
...well then you retrench and start acting reasonable again...attaching your Leftist political philosophy and commitments to science in an upper-middlebrow kind of way.
Talk about innovation, and reason and sensible non-profit help for the poor. Keep publishing the latest poetry and high culture and back away from the activist ledge.
Look for the moral liberal roots so you can eventually start discrediting other people's moral roots and claiming moral superiority and majoritarian solidarity.
Tuck the activist back away in your hearts for awhile, dear New Yorker writers.
I've read enough "old" literature to be mildly surprised that everyone doesn't already know that.
"Damnable innovations!"
I didn't make it all the way through. Did she comment on the irony of publishing that piece in the New Yorker?
George Washington, on his deathbed, was said to have uttered these words: ...
Apparently not:
Google: No results found for "Beware of innovation in politics." -"was said to have uttered these words".
Also ["Beware of innovation in politics." -"noah webster"] = no results that actually have the (false) Washington quote.
I liked the piece but she obviously has an ax to grind.
Years ago, I read a book called "The second Wave" but it doesn't come up on Amazon now. It pointed out how successful corporations had to start thinking about the replacement product before their "cash cow" was obsolete and how few could do that. IBM did pretty well with the PC. Eastman Kodak invented the digital camera but could not figure out how to make enough money on it to survive. Their business model was film developing.
Peter Drucker was the great expert on business models. "What business are you in ?" He would ask this early in a consultation.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
Yet things do change and "The New Yorker" does need paying customers for them to continue paying the ink stained wretches while they indulge in post modern beliefs in public utility. And that, I think, is the missed point. For economic enterprises, regardless of their mission or products, there has to be a customer who is willing to part with his money for your goods or services. The historical explanation may be interesting, but money floats the boat.
The original "What Business Are You In?" question was raised in the classic 1960 article Marketing Myopia by Theodore Levitt. It's a fundamental question. In the past, there were the proud "Railroad Men" who didn't realize they were really in the transportation business. More recently, we have the "Newspaper Men" who didn't understand they were in the information business. As a result, they were ill suited to adapt to changes in technology.
"IBM did pretty well with the PC."
Sure, but that was a lucky accident, not something planned by the higher-ups.
Per wiki - Enron was named "America's Most Innovative Company" by the magazine Fortune for six consecutive years, from 1996 to 2001.
Fareed Zakaria: Do not read New Yorker. OR, you may adopt it as is in your next article. FZ likes to borrow from JL.
A prediction: This piece will get JL the Pulitzer.
Another prediction: HRC will win all the way to WH. Why? No one is touching her or creating any hiccups. She is already the POTUS. You just have not elected her yet.
"Clayton Christensen's disruptive innovation scholarship" is largely ex post facto reasoning where Christensen jettisons everything unfavorable to his thesis, which turns out to be quite a lot. Even if his fictional history were accurate, his thesis offers no predictive value.
I've spent my career working for companies which were genuinely disruptively innovative. Almost all crashed and burned and most of those that didn't aren't recognizable save for their name.
As Biff wrote, one sign a company in in deep trouble is the amount of "innovation" coming from upper management, sales and marketing, most of which boggle the mind in their idiocy.
The most successful businesses tend to do one thing really well cheaper and better than their competitors. Turns out that the "law" of business hasn't changed at all.
In my first comment, I should have mentioned that I think Clayton Christensen's "disruptive innovation" ideas have a lot of explanatory power, though obviously they don't have quite as much predictive power regarding the specific threats/opportunities any particular organization might be facing. (Given the complexities involved in forecasting the future, it couldn't be otherwise.)
For what it's worth, a Businessweek reporter interviewed Christensen about the New Yorker piece, and the (sometimes entertaining) response is worth a read if you are into this sort of thing. Christensen essentially calls Lepore a hack, and I think the reporter makes a dog-whistle accusation that Christensen is sexist at the end of the interview.
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