Innovation is now being bought and sold; it has become an industry; a hot one!

People specialize in it and it has become an item of discussion at board meetings which means that sooner or later somebody must do a power point presentation on “what do we do about innovation”?

It’s clear that it’s never good when a good thing becomes an industry; with innovation however this is a logical impossibility. Qualitative factors are superior to quantitative factors; in other words quantity may originate from quality (innovation may become an industry), but quality NEVER originates from quantity: it is simply not possible.

It is possible to turn the outcomes of innovation into an industry; it is however not possible to “develop”, “mass-produce”, buy , “outsource”, in-source or crowd-source innovation….not REALLY.

Na ja:

It is possible to create favorable conditions for people to find ways to make stuff faster and cheaper but in this (quantitative) context innovation is not really innovation.

A good example of innovative ideas becoming an industry through numbers is the management theories of the 80s and 90s:

the idea was captured, books followed the idea, consulting companies followed the books, company policies were formed with the help of consulting companies, a lot of people who read the books declared themselves experts and set up their own consulting companies; when there were enough of these, they formed industry associations and introduced certification processes, charged money for membership and certification (creating the only barrier to entry), etc., until somebody had a different view, and a new cycle began.

A gradual unfolding of quantity from one single qualitative moment of insight.

The same goes for product innovations, scientific innovations, etc.