CIO magazine's Thomas Wailgum has a refreshing way of talking about words, and this time he's taking on "innovation" and its suffocating overuse by vendors. It seems that every time you turn around these days, a vendor comes out with an "innovative solution" that is really just an incremental advance or a new product looking for a business problem.

"The term innovative itself is on the precipice of falling into the abyss of meaningless marketing rhetoric," Wailgum laments. "When every technology iteration, every small step is termed 'innovative,' then what you have is a collective, irritating din that, conversely, makes anything new and notable exactly the same as everything else."

Much "innovation" is touted in the realm of ERP technologies, for example, but Wailgum asks whether the basic business principles and processes have changed enough to warrant the multitude of innovations that vendors have been heralding. The real problem with the vendors' claims is that they aren't the ones in a position to define innovation. It is the customer who decides whether a new offering is useful.

"You don't see supermodel Gisele Bundchen telling us how beautiful she is in her latest magazine spread. She just is," he writes. "If she kept telling us how gorgeous she was, it's more than likely that we would start to think otherwise."

Companies don't need technology innovation for the sake of innovation, Wailgum reminds his readers (some of which, with a little luck, are vendors). Companies need new ways to solve the business problems that are holding them back.

For more:
- see Thomas Wailgum's post at CIO

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