Claim: To use a word broadly renders it meanless.
Some examples from the twitershpere and blogisphere:
"Retailers can improve private label performance by focusing innovation on specific age segments where private label is under-developed." (from @infores)
- Isn't the concept of private label simply being able to rapidly produce clones of other successful products?
- Instead of innovation, doesn't the author really mean "target" products in specific age segments
"Wolf Blass leading wine innovation with new green label PET bottles... 29% less GHG emissions than before..." (from @Wine_Australia)
- In this case the innovation is agreeing to "adopt" someone else's new product (new green label PET bottles)
"Have ERPs traded innovation growth in favor of M&A growth? And what does it mean for customers?" (from @tminahan)
- Here I assume the author is referring to "new product development", but could refer to "process or business model changes".
Techdirt's Mike Masnick uses a different definition in his post, "
Why Segway Failed to Reshape the World". He distinguishes innovation from inventions defining innovation as "an ongoing process of taking a product and adjusting and adapting it to the market".
- Here innovation happens after the invention; it is the "enhancing of the product".
- I wonder if @tminahan was referring to this in the above quote?I don't think so.
"1.2 million students each year fail to graduate. ..American schools need innovation." (from @edutopia)
- What do the schools need? It sounds like a "plan" to reduce drop outs
If innovation can mean target, adopt, new product development, process or business model changes, enhancing a product or a plan are we truly communicating anything when we use the term?
