The Cult of Innovation

You must innovate. Your company must innovate. If you don’t innovate, you will be gobbled up in the competitive global marketplace.

Um…maybe not.

Challenging this assumption is Dan Saffer in Business Week’s Outside Shot column (subscription required).

Innovation in and of itself, he contends, is a hollow mantra that will fail in the end because companies are simply after the new and the different – and not the meaningful.

Meeting needs of customers through innovation, not just providing “purple ketchup,” is what will enable innovation to succeed. What we innovate must make our lives or work better — not just be a new and different feature that makes ketchup purple.