Innovation and all that

The bold brilliance of the innovator needs the patient genius of design to make it work

If there’s a bigger darling than design these days, it’s innovation. We’re seeing a tendency to link, or in geo-political jargon, hyphenate them; in academese, conflate the two; at any rate, we’re &-ing them.

Most will agree that it’s a Batman and Robin thing, and innovation is the caped crusader. Design belongs downstream. An enabler, in the trivial sense that every man-made thing has to be designed in some degree. Not the founding genius.

Perhaps, but the deeper design of innovation suggests that design and its methods could be crucial to the success of innovation. Not downstream, but central.

What makes innovation and