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Companies, from top to bottom fear innovation. There, it has been said.

Innovation is change. It is disruptive to the status quo. To the norms. To the standard business practices cherished so much by bureaucracies the world over. Innovation is the business equivalent of revolution. And the entrenched and established old guard fears revolution more than anything else.

Like the now classic “don’t taze me bro;” what is said means nothing. Every company, organization, and individual will state quite openly, that innovation is important. However, their actions show a different story. While a company is responsible, there is blame to be shared from the lowest individual to the highest government authority. Society at its very core, holds within itself a deep aversion to innovation.

Fashion And Design.

Matt Mattus, in his book “Beyond Trend“, highlights the disturbing fact that fashion and design have not developed a new “movement” since the 1960s. The broad category of Design (including all manner of subsets from Logos to Levis) is a marker of culture. Meaning, if design isn’t moving forward, then culture isn’t moving forward.

For whatever reason, there has been no broad movement since the jump from Modernism into Post Modernism (which is still technically a movement not yet defined, as Post Modernism merely means “after modernism.”). The closest current now, which might become a movement, is the design work coming from Brazil.

To truly create a movement, it takes a measure of boldness or insanity. Boldness is celebrated only when it succeeds. It is derided as arrogance under any other circumstances.

Development.

Society is powered by the new generation, but driven by the older. Those who would truly innovate, are not in the proper position to foster and develop change. They are on the bottom rungs of society, merely fresh legs to drive business on its steady, and safe course.

As it gets older, the human brain stops developing new synapses. It becomes less and less capable of understanding new information; less able to accommodate (that is, to change oneself in reaction to new information) and more likely to assimilate (that is to fit the information into an existing framework). The leaders of the world (politicians, businessmen, etc) are all older. All much less likely to accommodate, and more likely to assimilate.

Therefore, new ideas are even less likely to be implemented, and more likely to be adapted. Like the amazing features on a concept vehicle that never see a production line. Innovation has become a concept, designed and showcased to foster a false sense that things will get better in the future.

If humanity truly was innovative; then rocket cars and moon bases would already be in existence.

It Looks Like Innovation!

Companies are notorious at showcasing innovation, and delivering nothing. Shell and BPs recent stint of advertisements highlighting their research and development are a prime example. Both present themselves as searching for innovative solutions; creating new technologies that will make oil production cleaner, safer, and cheaper.

And yet: Oil production is still being handled the same way it has been since it was first discovered. Of course, the means have gotten more sophisticated; but that’s merely refinement posing as innovation. The process is still drill a hole, remove oil, refine oil, sell products.

Drug companies are similar. Slightly modifying a drugs composition in order to decrease or change side effects, is how most drug patents are maintained. With a fancy name, an old drug is paraded as something new; as though it underwent some home make over, or read a self help book.

Human Nature

The mechanisms and behaviors that allowed humanity to survive and thrive for the last hundred thousand years or so, are now inhibiting its very progress.

The early human, who wandered off to investigate some thing, was eaten. Curiosity did kill the cat, and quite often.

What survived was a genetic predisposition towards caution. An avoidance of risk, of change. It was a simple matter of survival. It could be argued that the development of agriculture was a step AWAY from risk, from innovation. Growing food is a much safer, and more successful proposition, than hunting.

All of these arguments lead the way to one point:

Innovation is difficult. Easily the most difficult undertaking in human history. It requires a tremendous effort and sacrifice. Not only is it a struggle against society, and the established order of things, but a struggle against ones’ own self.

It is relatively easy to fight “the man,” yet incredibly difficult to fight oneself.

But if we wish to make the quantum leap forward, to stop refining age old processes and begin to implement truly new ideas, then we must.