Is innovation a fashion word?

Will innovation be in the future one of those words used by students in business schools to play KINO? Other words and expresions such as synergy, value add, value aggregator, were fashion words in other days corrupted by the excess of use.

What is really what we mean with innovation?

In some circuits, I have heard about technical and technological innovation. Others tell about “Hybridation”, the capacity to innovate based on mixing knowledges and sciences used in different sectors for a sector it was never used before. Other innovators call themselves as a such by being agregators of technology.

In a company, there are different reasons for innovation. As in the book “Making innovation work” (by Tony Dávila) in the game of innovation we play to win or just play for not to loose and we can be radical or smooth in our innovations. This depends on our target and our capacity to innovate.

Bear in mind what the target of innovation is. A company innovates in order to keep on in the market competition or to create a new market that will be of good profit. Madonna innovates in order to sell more LP’s and concerts, Ford was an innovator when designed the first chain manufacturing facility for cars, Toyota innovated in organization and supply chain management when implemented the just in time phylosophy.

In the developed world we are now living a comptetition for innovation. In the old times the wealth of a country was measured by the amount of gold, nowadays the competition is in the level of innovation that countries are achieving and the investment in innovation done by those countries.

Everything is innovation now and it seems that this is the Era of the innovation, nevertheless we have been innovating since the day the human being we started using silex stone chips as cutting tools. The difference probably is that it was not the race in innovation in the past as it is now.

So, is innovation a fashion word? It has always been there, in different disciplines and with different aims as part of the human society evolution.