Information is a layered proposition. It doesn’t really matter how it explodes, because we live in a particular information space. That space is organized logrithmically, so it is difficult to move into those exploding layers.

These layers provide persistence. You still need those pedegoical layers before you can consume the explosion. Too much of the explosion is noise. In that explosiion are presentations that expand your understanding, but most of it remains inaccessible, and thus ineffective and impervious to your use.

Beliefs require pedegogy. Pedegogy provides the entry points into a culture, a community of practice. A culture makes information discontinuous. A discovery within one culture is meaningless outside of that culture.

Given that we ignore culture in our requirements elicitation, we don’t notice the texture of the information. It’s like we threw it all in a blender and just made a shake out of it.

I drove through a cloud one morning. It wasn’t fog. It was a real cloud just squeezing itself through the Rockies. A cloud clumps. Likewise, information clumps. Functionality clumps. Value clumps.

I’m not necessarily a new commenter, we’ve actually exchanged emails. Anyways, giving you’re interest and work in blogging, you might find this interesting. It’s a site that does a Myers-Briggs analysis on bloggers based on what they write:

http://www.typealyzer.com

Quite fun and if you check out the analysis of my little blog, you’ll see why I like you so much…
http://tinyurl.com/AlignAssessment

Wishing you all the best,

Andy

@AM – Thanks, and welcome to Tyner Blain. You’re definitely right that innovation is not an end to itself. Innovation needs to provide differentiated value, or it is not worth pursuing (it won’t have an impact). Further, to your point, it needs to be directed in a positive way to have a positive impact.

You also make an excellent point about innovating beyond the capacity of your market to consume the innovation.

Clayton Christian posed the question about whether a company innovates beyond what their mass of customers require in “The Innovator’s Dilemma”. There is also a question about whether one has innovated beyond the point of delivering value.

There is nothing that says innovation is inherently good. Financial services innovated a tremendous amount of financial engineering. So much so that no one understood it, could regulate it or apparently manage it. Investment Banking has innovated itself out of existence. One has to remember that IB really does provide the very valuable and needed service of analyzing companies and allocating capital to those who can effectively deploy it. That IB has innovated it’s self out of existence isn’t the real horror.

The real horror is that because that IB paid so well that it sucked up a huge percentage of our best, brightest and most capable minds. Where did the engineers, scientists and doctors go? Wall St. Where are they now? Forget about the credit crisis, that pales in comparison to the crisis of IQ misallocation. For 30 years Wall St has been attracting the most capable and talented minds and focused them in an innovation competition, and just like Wiley E. Coyote, the entire field ran off a cliff, then looked at the abyss below and has collectively said ‘Help!’

You’re right that innovation can provide value, but there has to be a reason otherwise it’s a bridge to nowhere.

Andy E. Coyote

I’ve worked on projects at companies on both sides of the innovation chain, and the ones that were trying to lead [dominate] their markets made for the best experiences, hands down. Thanks for the great insight! -Michael