The shackles of innovation

It's a word that has lost virtually meaning due to its constant repetition: innovation. Any number of industries must hear this word all the time -- it seems like the single most important thing to just about everyone. Is your product, or site, or approach innovative? If not, it might as well be worthless. Everyone is trying to "think outside the box" (a phrase so cliched at this point that even putting it in quotes doesn't give it the ironic distance it deserves). There is a widespread assumption that the status quo is bad, the way we do anything today is inferior to some "new" way we've yet to discover, and the search for this "new" way should trump all other efforts.

I can't agree with any of that. Striving fervently for innovation strikes me as severely misdirected effort, not because I believe innovation is bad, but because I think it is a side effect, not a goal unto itself.

The biggest problem with focusing solely on innovation, in my mind, is the assumption that current ways are bad -- it is starting with a ground floor decision to disregard all the prior work done by those in your field to get you where you are today. It is certainly true that previous work may have been done based on faulty information, incorrect assumptions, and other ill-advised decisions that could have brought things to a highly imperfect state today. But it is by no means a guarantee -- in fact, the opposite could also be true. Your product/site/whatever could be the way it is today because of highly reasoned research and testing that led to it being extremely solid and well thought-out. Unless you know all this background already, you can't really claim that innovation is necessary.

Focusing solely on innovation also sidesteps what should probably be the true goal of any project - to make the best product/site possible. A thorough process will explore the tried and true ways as well as newer, more innovative approaches. In many cases, more standard, "non-innovative" methods may prove to be the best fit.

Let's say you create a new site or product and all your testing and research leads to a conclusion that your best bet is to rely on well-established techniques. Had your goal been solely to innovate, this project would be a failure -- you've created nothing innovative. And yet, you've created the best possible product/site for your users -- the only problem was that it didn't involve creating anything truly new, just using existing principles to their greatest effect. How could that be bad?

Now let's consider the converse situation. Rather than seeking innovation, your goal at the start of a project is solely to create the best product/site possible. You do your brainstorming and research and find that the best solution is one that DOES in fact use a new, innovative approach -- it is thoroughly supported by your testing. No one would call this project a failure, and by focusing on making the best product/site possible, you've now overdelivered by also finding an innovative approach in the process. Innovation was not the goal -- it was icing on the cake.

There are a lot of reasons why innovation is still such a prized asset -- it's sexy, it sounds good, it shakes designers out of their boredom -- but these are not enough to warrant prizing it above quality. Think you've got a better way to do something? By all means, explore that new method and see if it works better -- but be willing to recognize the value in also learning that it's possible an existing method is still superior.

I should mention that this post is partially inspired by Scott Berkun, who I saw speak at the UI12 conference in Cambridge, MA, in 2007. He spoke about the "myths of innovation" and mentioned, for example, how innovations are often accidents, and he also talked about how the word "innovation" has indeed lost a lot of meaning over the years. I don't claim that this post represents his opinions at all, but his talk came back into my mind as I worked on a recent project that was driven by a client's desire to innovate. Check out his blog, it's got some good stuff.