Elite Vs Expert “Innovation”

The world is full of ambitious middle managers seeking to brand themselves as “innovative”, or maybe even “visionary”. You might think their strategy would be to use personal experience to collect promising innovation ideas over the course of their careers, ideas they then try to implement when they finally have sufficient resources. 

No, that is just too much work, and requires expertise. Instead they usually follow the media conversation to discern the latest innovation fashion buzzwords, pick a suitable one, and try to show how they are “getting into” it. First they’ll read articles, pass them around, and perhaps attend some affiliated conferences. Maybe try to join or even found a local interest or working group that meets to discuss the topic. 

Better still, they might try to initiate a buzzword-related project, recruiting whomever they can find locally to implement it. The usual strategy will be to create an impressive demo that they can credit to the buzzword. Even if, as in the classic story of stone soup, credit for demo effectiveness should really go to ordinary sweat and skills.

Even better is to get someone famously associated with the buzzword to be affiliated with their project. As an advisor, or maybe more. Such advisors don’t actually have to do much, and their advice isn’t really wanted. No, the goal is just to be able to trumpet their affiliation. 

For this purpose, ambitious middle managers don’t really want the sorts of experts who have been working doggedly at this buzzword area for decades, while the buzzword was out of fashion. Instead they want the sort of people who are mentioned in media articles on the topic, and invited to give keynote talks at the buzzword affiliated conferences. The sort of people who tend to spend their lives getting their names in articles and giving keynote talks, and who a few years ago had the same association with other buzzword topics. 

That is, elites. Managers are more elites than experts, and moreso the higher they climb. And these elites want their efforts validated by other elites. The want their topics validated as lately fashionable buzzwords, and they want their associates validated as elites connected to those buzzwords. That is what will get the respect of their also-elite manager associates and supervisors. 

Until the buzzword winds shift, and new buzzwords are king. At which point our middle managers will shift their attention to those. Dropping all their tired buzzword projects, regardless of how successful were their demo projects. 

Yes, sometimes experts do use decades of experience to envision better practices, and get funding to try them out. But they usually have to pretend that their better ideas are somehow an expression of the latest buzzwords, and swap out those appearances as buzzwords come and go. And then when an idea actually works, they have to get buzzword-distracted middle managers to pay sufficient attention to actually approve them. And then of course take credit for them as the just desserts of their buzzword pursuits.