"Innovation" was the most common word used by dinner speakers at CeBIT Australia, the IT expo held in Sydney last week. Every time the word was used it rang hollow. The hollowness was amplified by the entertainment for the evening - Bjorn Again, the tribute band that copies ABBA.

The word innovation is also born again. It shot to stardom in the 1990s. Then fell in our current decade into such common use that it can connote anything from invention and fundamental scientific discovery through to creativity and mere change.

Before innovation

At a certain point old folks have to stop caring and let the definition of a word be what a new generation of users want it to be. When regulation has failed they have to let the market define itself.

Almighty marketing dollars have taken hold of the word and bent it to spin and sell stuff. Is it time to turn on, tune in and switch off the word innovation?

No, leave the light on. The word innovation is here to stay a while longer. And so in our firm we'll persist with the descriptor we've used since 2000 on our Website, letterhead and other identification - "Intellectual Property & Innovation Professionals".

After innovation

Looking back, innovation was a much more useful term when it essentially meant "change". So an innovation could be something as low level, but noteworthy, as Tiffany deciding to change its box colour.

However, it is no use fighting the power of the almighty marketing dollar when it has already grafted a word  to  a new definition or meanings for it. Recognising the change, a few years ago we updated the definition of it in our firm's evolving Commercialisation Glossary. Here is an extract defining the word innovation. 

A shorter version of that definition is set out at the end of a post in 2006, Defining Commercialisation. 

Evidencing the redefined use of the word innovation, for a useful list of Australian inventions see The White Hat Guide to Australian Inventions, Discoveries & Innovations. For a list of many of those inventions in date order, see 106 years of Australian Innovations.