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Remaking school, news, art crit: new examples of actual innovation
If everyone's doing it, it's not innovation.
But if it's new, and useful and inspiring and creative, then it's the genuine article: actual innovation.
Launching a me-too social media strategy, or some other buzzword-laden project, is not innovation. It might generate some benefits, but by definition it's not innovative.
You want to find real innovation? Look for the creators, the eccentrics, the people with a spark and an edge and a willingness to take risks. They're doing something new, which generally makes them harder to find and riskier to bank on. Everyone else is doing the old thing. Only a few are doing the new thing.
Examples. Here are three projects that actually are innovative - that is, they're doing something actually new with the available technology and media.
• Sal Khan runs the world's biggest school, and it's completely free. The Khan Academy is a collection of 1,600 instructional videos, all posted on YouTube, all designed, illustrated, and narrated by Sal himself. Anyone with an Internet connection can learn math - from "one plus one" all the way through advanced calculus - or various topics within biology, history, and finance - just from watching Sal's videos.
• The Gregory Brothers are creating hit music in a brand new way, by auto-tuning popular news clips they find on YouTube. Their Auto Tune The News project recently spawned two songs that made it onto the pop charts - Double Rainbow and Bed Intruder.
• Louise Sacco helps run a Boston museum spotlighting "bad art" - called, yes, the Museum Of Bad Art. Sacco and her fellow curators pursue a mission of "bringing the worst of art to the widest of audiences."
All three projects have gotten a fair amount of press recently - including Fortune magazine covering Sal as Bill Gates' favorite teacher, a New York Times article about the Gregory Brothers, and an NYT article about MOBA.
And all three projects show similarities in being (a) labors of love, (b) created for the quality of the work, and (c) delivering the goods as simply and elegantly as possible, without any froo-froo features or idolization of technology. In each case, technology is simply the tool, a means toward the end of a good experience. True innovation tends to be like this: created for the love of it, for the good of the user, and with technology operating solely as a tool. Compare this with the typical hyped-up project that is solely based on a short-term profit motive, spotlights technology as the be-all and end-all, and has little regard for the user experience. I'll choose the Khan/Gregory/Sacco approach any day, and I think most other people would, too.
I'll also note that all three - Sal Khan, the Gregory Brothers, and Louise Sacco - presented at my Gel 2010 conference earlier this year - the first major conference appearance for all of them. Gel attendees saw them first! But you can watch their videos: here's Sal, the Gregory Brothers, and Louise.
Finally, you can sign up right now for Gel 2011. See them first at Gel!
I love the Kahn Academy. When I need to help one of my kids with a math problem in an area I'm rusty (most recently how to factor quadratic equations), kahnacademy.org is my first, and usually my only, stop.
Kevin @ Solera Home Improvement
I wonder to what degree innovation will always feel new to some people and old-hat to others depending on your areas of exposure and interest. For example, I actually guffawed out loud at auto-tuning news clips being touted as innovation, because to me it was such an overdone idea that I couldn't help rolling my eyes at it YEARS ago (literally -- I remember being half amused and half tired of it already when people were making songs by autotuning Obama's campaign speeches, so it was at least already old hat during the last U.S. federal election campaign season).