You Call That Innovation?
Companies Love to Say They Innovate, but the Term Has Begun to Lose Meaning
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By
LESLIE KWOH
Updated May 23, 2012 2:42 p.m. ET
Got innovation? Just about every company says it does.
Companies throw the term "innovation" around but that doesn't mean they are actually changing anything monumental. Leslie Kwoh reports on digits.
Businesses throw around the term to show they're on the cutting edge of everything from technology and medicine to snacks and cosmetics. Companies are touting chief innovation officers, innovation teams, innovation strategies and even innovation days.
But that doesn't mean the companies are actually doing any innovating. Instead they are using the word to convey monumental change when the progress they're describing is quite ordinary.
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Like the once ubiquitous buzzwords "synergy" and "optimization," innovation is in danger of becoming a cliché—if it isn't one already.
"Most companies say they're innovative in the hope they can somehow con investors into thinking there is growth when there isn't," says Clayton Christensen, a professor at Harvard Business School and the author of the 1997 book, "The Innovator's Dilemma."
Read More * B-Schools Join Rush to Capitalize on 'Innovation' * The Buzzwords We Can't Help Using * Now Enrolling: Innovation 101
A search of annual and quarterly reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission shows companies mentioned some form of the word "innovation" 33,528 times last year, which was a 64% increase from five years before that.
More than 250 books with "innovation" in the title have been published in the last three months, most of them dealing with business, according to a search ofAmazon.com. AMZN -0.59%
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