Progress vs. Innovation

 

 

I recently gave a talk on utilizing ‘innovative partnerships’ as a way to solve ‘human capital’ issues within the hospitality and tourism industry. But I was reluctant to pepper my talk with ‘innovation’ or ‘innovative’ and instead used the word ‘progressive’.

Raise your hand if your office regularly uses, or urges, ‘disruptive innovation’. This state of affairs is laid firmly at the feet of Clayton Christensen, a Harvard business professor whose 1997 book The Innovator’s Dilemma remains entrenched on university reading lists, despite the fact it’s been widely criticized and last year, eviscerated in The New Yorker by staff writer (and Harvard history professor) Jill Lepore. (The dilemma, by the way, is when ‘doing the right thing' is 'the wrong thing’.)

 

A successful business is prosperous because of good decision-making. So bosses tend to make similar decisions over a period of time because it ‘worked before’. To put progress versus innovation into context requires a quick historical tour: the 18th century championed progress (Age of Reason); the 19th century had evolution (increasing civil secularity); the 20th century embraced growth (capitalist commodification); followed quickly by innovation (mint flavour in toothpaste). It’s that last bit we’re stuck on. Keeping in mind that innovation simply means to ‘make changes in anything established’, bosses’ decision-making must now embrace ‘disruption’ and with it shiny, forward-facing innovation. Yet, this approach, as Lepore says, is based on "profound anxiety about financial collapse, an apocalyptic fear of global devastation, and shaky evidence."

 

Innovation is not progress. Innovation is the incremental tinkering we do to stuff, but innovation cannot make claims to the contribution of a group’s betterment, let alone a contribution to the ideal standard in society. Educating girls, reproductive health freedom and criminalizing war rape are not innovations; this is progress. The hyperactive narrative has become ‘innovate or die’; ‘disrupt or be disrupted’ (ack!). This is fear mongering disguised as business (or development) guru-speak wafting out of ‘innovation centres’.

 

Nonprofits, for-profits and academia are urged to install ‘innovation teams’ in order to ‘innovate disruptively’, so as not to get left behind (ack!). (Can you feel the doomsday vibe?) This used to be called good ol’ research and development and it was never fraught with the handwringing we see today. Yes, progress has also given us two world wars, the possibility of nuclear annihilation and repeated genocides (and perversely was also used in pro-slavery rhetoric), but the argument here does not confuse progress with virtue.

 

The triumphalist innovation (or disruption) cannot claim the future as it desires, like progress can. Innovation resides in the commercial world of immediacy and cutthroat competition; progress is our grand design on an intended, deliberate pathway.

 

Innovation is reactive; progress is proactive.

 

We need to focus on what organizations do well, yes, but instead of fixating over innovations, the organization should be exploring how it can create and deliver actual new knowledge, not fragmentation. Perhaps what’s called for is a healthier dose of skepticism when it comes to ‘new and improved’.

 

PayPal founder Peter Thiel once remarked, “We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters”. He was referring to our inability to elongate our time focus. This applies to for-profits and nonprofits: innovation is a development shortcut.

 

What we don’t need are the whiz-bang distractions of innovation, but rather the hard slog of solutions that require long-term commitment. Not as glamorous, sure, but absolutely necessary.

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Photo: Image from Mathieu Roy and Harold Crooks' 2011 documentary, Surviving Progress

This article originally appeared in Word Vietnam magazine and has been adapted. To view the magazine’s online version click here.

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