Innovation is Dead. Long live Innovation.

There is no better place for me to deposit my thoughts on this subject than the ol' blog. As we try to put precise language to our value, our perspective, and our challenges, we run into ambiguity, shifting definitions, and a marketplace completely saturated with "Innovation". I would love to talk about it with everyone until the cows come home (haven't seen them for quite some time, actually), but the only way to get to the written bottom of this is by writing.

Unlike Yap, I never carry a camera with me because I greatly fear it will be turned against me, but it leads me to miss documenting things like a recent sight. Down by Reedy Creek where the rail cars are shifted and rearranged by men with skills that are hundred years out of date (yet indispensible) there was a Southern Railway car that looked beaten to all hell. It was rusted out in many spots and the rust-colored paint had all but peeled off. Bold letters across the bottom of the car declared "Southern Serves the South", but in all caps, faded and worn, in the upper left hand portion of the car was the clarion call, "SOUTHERN GIVES THE GREEN LIGHT TO INNOVATIONS."

I can't imagine that paint job happened any time in the past fifty years based on the look and the pluralization of "Innovations".

Moments like this help me to declare, "Innovation is Dead. Long live Innovation." Isn’t this the greatest paradox of all? We all know that innovation is a word associated with every product and every company and every initiative – to the point that it has lost all meaning. YET, innovation is a fundamental truth that will always exist. There will always be new products, new services, improvements, insights. It is the natural way of things like the wind or evolution. Things keep moving and changing. Innovation happens.