What Innovation Forgets
The Curious Path #2
A couple of years ago, I took the opportunity to go back to university.
Not to change careers but to satisfy a curiosity that had been building. I enrolled in a Master’s program in social anthropology, figuring it would add depth to the work I was already doing in innovation. I’d spent over a decade immersed in R&D, design thinking projects and corporate innovation strategies. I assumed I might bring something interesting to the classroom.
What I didn’t expect was how little any of it would land.
Sitting in the anthropology department, flipping through course readings and listening to lectures, I started to notice something odd. The word innovation never came up. And when I brought it up, it didn’t quite land. It was met, not with hostility but a kind of quiet unease. I could sense that the term itself carried baggage.
It was in those early weeks, I quickly realised: outside of our industry bubble, innovation doesn’t always mean what we think it means.
In anthropology, no term is taken for granted. Especially not one as ubiquitous and slippery as innovation. The absence of innovation in Anthropological literature wasn’t ignorance, it was intentional. A refusal to grant the practice automatic legitimacy.
But in our industry, we throw the term around like it’s self-evident. Innovation is good, innovation is necessary.
It’s in our job titles, department names, budget spends and brand comms. But do we ever stop to ask what it actually means? Where it came from? What it’s doing?
The Heretic’s Word
Aristotle was skeptical of innovation, not just in politics or philosophy, but in everyday culture. He didn’t believe in introducing new toys to children or new dances to society. He thought all useful forms of organization had already been discovered. In his view, novelty was more threat than virtue.
In early Rome, terms like novitas and res nova "the new thing" carried an ambiguous weight. Depending on context, they could mean renewal or disruption. Over time, these ideas were absorbed into Latin as innovo "I renew," "I restore" a word that found its way into spiritual and political texts alike.
From the 1400s through the 1600s, “innovation” became a synonym for heresy, rebellion, revolt. It was not a word people claimed for themselves. No self-respecting reformer or thinker would have dared call themselves an innovator. The term was used to accuse, not celebrate.
In 16th-century Europe, it was a term of suspicion. To innovate meant to meddle, to alter what should be left alone. In religion, innovators were heretics. In law, they were threats to the natural order. Innovation wasn’t about progress. It was about corruption.
It wasn’t until the 20th century that the word began to flip, rehabilitated by economists, policymakers and industrialists as something hopeful, productive, essential. No longer dangerous, it became the engine of GDP, the path to national competitiveness, the solution to all of our problems. Today, the OECD speaks of it in reverent tones. The EU declares it essential to solving climate change. In China, innovation is hardwired into the Five-Year Plan, framed as a pillar of national rejuvenation. In Singapore, it underpins long-term governance and future-readiness. In Kenya, it’s hailed as the engine of fintech inclusion. In Colombia, it shapes rural development and peacebuilding strategies. From Silicon Valley accelerators to UN development frameworks, from Amsterdam’s city planning to New Delhi’s startup ecosystem, innovation isn’t just a tool, it’s a doctrine.
We act like this shift was inevitable. But it wasn’t. It was cultural.
From Heresy to Hope And Back Again?
What if the skepticism wasn’t backward but wise?
Aristotle wasn’t against change, exactly. He was wary of novelty without necessity. Rome saw newness as powerful, but dangerous. The Reformation called innovation heresy. And for centuries, the word was a warning, not a goal.
That might sound outdated. But in a time where innovation is everywhere; from startup VC pitch decks, to NHS procurement policy, school curriculums promising ‘future-ready’ children, to think tanks reimagining democracy and even in food banks trialing app-based efficiency. Maybe such lessons of caution aren’t such a bad thing.
Because somewhere along the way, we stopped asking the deeper questions.
Innovation for what?
Innovation for whom?
Innovation at what cost?
The original fear around innovation wasn’t just conservatism, it was a fear of destabilization. Of losing something essential in the rush toward the new.
And maybe that fear wasn’t unfounded.
Today’s innovation landscape is full of destabilizing undercurrents. From AI-generated content flooding social media and shaping our public discourse, to farming, where genetically modified seeds have increased yields while threatening biodiversity, to platform-driven gig work reshaping labor without safety nets - today’s innovations often destabilize faster than society can adapt.
But the mantra of innovation continues. It has become so thoroughly moralized, so wrapped up in the language of progress.
In a strange irony, innovation once rejected by theology has now become oddly theological. Its prophets are entrepreneurs and government ministers. Its rituals, workshops and sprints. Its scriptures, design thinking and trend reports. It asks for belief, demands sacrifice, promises redemption. And just like the faiths before it, it struggles to interrogate its own myths.
It has become a sort of emotional infrastructure in this time of uncertainty.
So much so that we rarely pause to consider its darker side. The extractive tendencies. The assumptions it rides in on. The speed it insists on.
But if we trace the word back to its roots, to innovo, to renewal and restore, maybe another version could be possible.
What if innovation wasn’t about disruption?
What if it was about restoring what’s been lost?
Maybe the wisdom of the past isn’t a constraint, but a counterweight. A grounding. A reminder that not all new things are good and not all old things are broken.
So rather than cast off the skepticism, what if we folded it back in?
The heretic’s word might still have something to teach us. Not to stop imagining but to do so with humility. To see innovation not as an endless push for more, but as a practice of discernment. Of noticing what matters and what needs tending, not just what can be scaled.
A kind of innovation that might not always look impressive on a pitch deck.
But it might be exactly what this moment calls for.
Innovation Is Emotional
In teams I’ve worked with, people genuinely care. They want to make good things. Frameworks and canvases help give shape to the mess. They make things feel doable.
But they also simplify. They smooth over the parts that don’t fit neatly on a Post-it.
And sometimes, what doesn’t fit is what matters most:
Local knowledge that doesn’t translate easily.
Slower ways of working that don’t fit the timeline.
Communities who don’t see “new” as inherently better.
In most cases, we weren’t doing this on purpose. But the process was tilted. Tilted toward speed. Toward scale. Toward a narrow idea of progress.
Anthropology helped me see that the way we innovate is full of assumptions.
Faster is better.
Iteration is neutral.
Value means growth.
Scale is success.
These aren’t facts, they are choices. But when we don’t name them, they start to look like truths.
I now increasingly see innovation not as a neutral toolset, but as a story we tell to make sense of change, to manage fear, to produce certainty where none exists.
Reclaiming Innovation
None of this is about being cynical. It’s about being honest.
Because if we’re serious about solving complex problems; climate, our food supply, healthcare and the relationship between human and machine intelligence, we need to bring in more of the real. More of the lived, messy, relational stuff.
Otherwise, we’re just building clever things on shaky foundations.
What if innovation didn’t have to mean disruption or speed?
What if it meant listening longer. Paying attention to what’s already working. Building trust, not just prototypes.
What if it looked more like maintenance, or repair, or stewardship?
In different parts of the world, people innovate in ways that don’t look like “innovation” as we define it. They adapt. Reuse.
These aren’t less advanced. They’re just based on different values.
There’s a lot we could learn, if we’re willing to look beyond our current beliefs.
Sometimes the most powerful thing we can do is slow down. Not to be inefficient but to see more clearly. To let complexity show up. To co-create instead of just extract insights. To ask better questions, and sit with them a little longer.
This isn’t a call to abandon innovation, but to reclaim it. To peel back some of the theology surrounding it.
Our faith has made us forget.
Forget that the future isn’t something we sprint towards.
It’s something we build together.
Not from frameworks, but from trust.
Not from processes, but from presence.
Not from disruption, but from dialogue.
Maybe the first step is admitting that we forgot to ask where this belief began.
- Kriss
Kriss is the Founder of Responsible innovation Lab, the author of The Little Book About Innovation’s Big Responsibility. Want more? Sign up to the The Curious Path and follow Ri Lab on Instagram.
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