‘Boring is the New Oil: Why the Tedious and Mundane Outpace Innovation’
Today’s Times shares how Amazon sends out plenty of press releases announcing innovative services but actually invests the vast majority of its resources into very old-fashioned techniques.
I believe the business world often gives too much attention to innovation. I imagine this is due to many business people consuming news, books, and other media that laud innovation. I believe the reason these outlets overpromote innovation that one can’t sell a book promising: boring. Promoting innovation is just what delivers the most clicks for journalists and sells the most books for authors.
Many people consider Bridge an innovative leader. Here at Bridge, our ‘innovation’ consists of using time-proven techniques, like calling up people on the telephone, adding links to sites, and adding products to websites. I must confess: the majority of what we do consists of the same ingredients used for years. One (key) difference: we’re promoting that our clients collaborate and use a shared database of products. Besides that, much like Amazon’s ‘innovative’ shipping services, it’s actually tried and true business practices.
I think a good book title would be: ‘Boring is the New Oil: Why the Tedious and Mundane Outpace Innovation.’
Tedious means hard work. Working on something mundane is not fun. Innovation, on the other hand, is short-hand for short cuts, ease, and fun. Those terms historically do not correlate with productive, long-term value.
I see working in tech as ‘drilling for oil.’ We’re on a rig, working almost seven days a week, doing mundane work that others wouldn’t want, and deferring enjoyment till we’re back on shore with our families. Hopefully we’re drilling in the right direction—and industry. If we succeed, we can lease the use of our boring code and processes that we’ve built to many people and extract value from it.