# Innovation ecosystem and innovation org are terrible but useful terms ### Innovation Orgs vs. R&D Orgs In my head, I’ve been referring to organizations whose role is to help innovations go from inklings to reality as “innovation orgs.” The term is meant to capture a large range of organizations - from universities and academic labs, to corporate R&D, to technology startups, to folks tinkering in their garages. Naturally, the edges of this definition are incredibly [[Nebulous]], but despite their diversity, these organizations share enough properties and constraints that I believe it’s valuable to lump them together <[[Lumpers and Splitters]]> and describe them collectively. However, “Innovation org” is not a widely (if ever?) used term, so for all intents and purposes it would be a piece of jargon specific to my writing. Jargon in general is a two-edged sword. [[Naming things is Powerful]] and [[Jargon is a mechanism for compressing information]] but at the same time it can be confusing and feel pretentious. Using the term “innovation” just exasperates the pretentiousness. Introducing a nebulous, pretentious-sounding term runs the risk of, if it catches on, becoming a [[Suitcase Handle Word]] that is used completely out of context in a way that destroys any distinction it might have made, and if it doesn’t catch on, a weird confusing placeholder in the text. “R&D organization” is a term that’s roughly analogous to “innovation organization” but most people are familiar with it. Using R&D organization wouldn’t require introducing a piece of jargon. The issue with the term “R&D organization” is that it implicitly scopes the discussion. I suspect that if I were to use the term R&D org, the reader would imagine an organization whose goal is to produce prototypes. Arguably most of the great innovation organizations like Bell Labs or The Skunkworks did *more* that just R&D. And in fact, I would argue that the trend of scoping organizations to just R&D (and often just R or D) has hamstrung the production of new knowledge and technology. Using “R&D organization” may lead to pedantic disagreements based on a reader’s (not incorrect!) prior about what a “R&D org” is and is not contrasting with my use of the term. The choice is then to either 1. Use “innovation org” and run the risk of some combination of it being misapplied or simply sliding off people’s brains while sounding pretentious. 2. Use “R&D org” in an unconventional way and run the risk of people disagreeing with conclusions based on their priors around the term. My hunch is that I should use “innovation org” and explicitly call out my use, plead forgiveness for introducing new jargon, and note what it does and does not entail - perhaps giving a list of examples to build up a reader’s pattern matching. Innovation orgs are a core part of the document, as opposed to a side idea so it seems worthwhile to burn some of the new jargon budget on the idea. Additionally, the differences between what I mean by innovation orgs is sufficiently different from what I think of as R&D orgs that using the latter would end up mangling several points. ### Innovation Ecosystem Impactful new knowledge or inventions rarely come from a single organization or mind. Instead, they come from many people working and interacting both across and between organizations. Perhaps a professor has an idea in a shower, collaborates with a professor at another university to do an experiment (funded by a wealthy philanthropist) that has uninspiring results that they publish in a middle tier journal. A researcher at a corporate R&D lab is stuck on a problem and happens across the paper that just happens to provide the solution to the researcher’s problem (after talking to the original professor.) However, the work would disrupt a major product line and doesn’t get support from management so the researcher and some friends quit to start a startup to try to commercialize it that is funded by several angel investors and an SBIR grant from the government. The startup builds a prototype and starts to sell the product before it’s bought by the competitor company to the first R&D lab, who scales up the product and sells it across the world. The idea isn’t actually an innovation until it’s impactful <[[Innovation is measured by impact]]> so the process of creating an innovation actually needs all of those interacting people, organizations, and institutions. Despite the fact that the term “innovation” has a lot of baggage and “ecosystem” is often a [[Suitcase Handle Word]], it’s pretty clear that it’s both useful to have a term to refer to this messy morass of interlocking institutions and that “innovation ecosystem” is probably the best term for it. - [ ] get people to review this argument ### Related * [[Wittgenstein: Reality is Shaped by the Words we Use]] * [[Heuretic is a better word than innovation]] [Web URL for this note](http://notes.benjaminreinhardt.com/Innovation+ecosystem+and+innovation+org+are+terrible+but+useful+terms) [Comment on this note](http://via.hypothes.is/http://notes.benjaminreinhardt.com/Innovation+ecosystem+and+innovation+org+are+terrible+but+useful+terms)