According to Bruce Nussbaum on Core77. "Innovation" died in 2008, killed off by overuse, misuse, narrowness, incrementalism and failure to evolve. It was done in by CEOs, consultants, marketeers, advertisers and business journalists who degraded and devalued the idea by conflating it with change, technology, design, globalization, trendiness, and anything "new." It was done it by an obsession with measurement, metrics and math and a demand for predictability in an unpredictable world. The concept was also done in, strangely enough, by a male-dominated economic leadership that rejected the extraordinary progress in "uncertainty planning and strategy" being done at key schools of design that could have given new life to "innovation. To them, "design" is something their wives do with curtains, not a methodology or philosophy to deal with life in constant beta--life in 2009.
Considering how much Bruce himself has been trumpeting the word this seems like an odd proclamation to me. Maybe he feels only he can spot real innovation. Or, maybe he is going to unveil a new word in 2010? He is probably correct but even more impressive is his use of "conflating", now that is innovation.
