Corporate matters

My job is to guide ideas for new revenue streams through a vetting process not unlike that of a product manager. I find it interesting (and not a little frustrating) that my colleagues are not enthused by the notion of new business innovation.

Well, actually—they don’t particularly welcome the notion of anything new.

I do get it—I don’t think there’s any organization that volunteers to change much of anything. The usual motivation to do so is some kind of gun to the head. You don’t change unless you have essentially no alternative. Change means uncertainty, and it’s not for nothing that there’s that saying “better the devil you know than the devil you don’t know.”

Well, anyhow, acknowledging that I myself am not packing enough firepower to entice my colleagues to think in terms of either new products or new markets, I’m researching how other organizations implement this sort of new business innovation.

Which of course means that I’m researching innovation consultants.

I’m just the teensiest bit jaded about this prospect. Yes—it’s sometimes worth money to have outside subject matter experts (what one of my colleagues self-importantly calls "SMEs", pronouncing them "SMEES") explain to folks in words of one syllable what you’ve been telling them for months to no avail. On the other hand: “thought leader”.

Here’s a possible example:

If you’ve just nouned an adjective to describe your value proposition, is that a sign of being terrifically innovative, or just really ignorant?

(In addition to the consultants I’ve also researched the usage of “corporate” as a noun. By digging past the first SERP page, I have found that it has very limited use in the financial world, and in the production of films for internal business use. In both those cases “corporate” is still implying an unarticulated noun—“corporate [bond]”, “corporate [film]”—and those usages are not applicable in this instance.)

So I’m calling bullshit, and this crowd moves to the bottom of my contact list.