Innovate or Die

Umair Haque recently wrote one of the best posts I've read in a while.  He expresses some of the same thoughts I've been having recently:

I haven't been posting a lot lately. Why not? I've been talking to lots of people - about a topic that is perhaps worth discussing here.  There's growing awareness of a disturbing incrementalism gripping Silicon Valley...  What's really going on here? I think the malaise is deep and systemic. Many of you may disagree - but I'm vastly disappointed in the moral and strategic bankruptcy of today's crop of venture investors and so-called revolutionaries.

"Incrementalism."  That's the word I've been searching for.  Don't know if Umair just made that up, but I like it.  And "underwhelmed" pretty much sums up how I feel about the state of technological innovation right now, actually for the past several years.  Sputtering along on fumes.

Not that there's anything wrong with that of course.  When times are good, anyway.

But Umair then goes on to make an astute observation about the ability of these startups light on innovation to survive the economic tsunami we are currently facing:

Today's crop of investors and startups are perhaps even more economically autistic than megacorporations. Too many are willfully blind to today's deepest and most essential strategic truth: that the path to radical value creation isn't cutting more deals (dude, high-five!!) - but in rebuilding a flawed, false global economy: one which actively transfers wealth from the poor to the rich, from the sick to the healthy, from productivity to cronyism.

I would rephrase the second half of that statement to read that the path to radical value creation isn't cutting more deals but in increasing productivity and human capacity.  That's been the role of computing for years now and it's one of the primary reasons developed nations have such a high standard of living.  Projects which don't actually add any value but merely exist because someone thinks they might be able to get acquired or because they think they might be able to sell ads end up as footnotes.

I have a feeling that the current state of anemic innovation is only sustainable because money has been ridiculously available at all levels of the economy for several years.  There was enough money floating around to keep even the most money-losing businesses afloat based purely on hope.  In our current environment that hope and smile might buy you a Coke.  As I predicted earlier this year in my post about IT spending in a recession, I think that "easy money" has pretty much dried up at this point.  Startups must now innovate--TRULY innovate--or die.  Twitters, social networks, and things created just because they can be need not apply.

I haven't seen much true innovation in the past several years.  Most of what is celebrated in the blogosphere is, frankly, fluff.  Mediocre fluff with rounded edges and odd names.  Where are the radical innovators?  I haven't been posting much lately either because frankly there is very little in the way of exciting ideas out there.  They are few and far between--computing seems to be in a state of suspended animation.  And I have a feeling there is going to be a massacre in this space in the next few years as a result.  If you don't innovate and provide value you die.

There are bright spots, of course--it's not all gloom and doom.  But that list sounds like it would actually make a pretty decent post of its own, and I'll take the opportunity :)

Comments

[Randy Kolb]

This post presents an intriguing contrast to your previous entry on the Next Generation Web (http://www.jasonkolb.com/weblog/2008/04/the-next-genera.html). That post would indicate it's an opportune time to kick-start imagination and jump into high gear, particularly since so few appear to be doing so based on the observations contained in your current post. Maybe we're seeing the sad effects of too much TV when today's innovators were going through early childhood development ;-)