Innovation theatre: because you are worth it.

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  • 03/10/2019

    I used to use the phrase — with apologies to Freud — ‘eppendorf envy’ to describe the bias in much medical innovation whereby useful advance pretended it owed its magic to ‘basic’ science. Doctors wore white coats in order to sprinkle the laboratory magic on as a veneer. But I like this cognate term also: innovation theatre.

    To be fair to the banks, they weren’t the first institutions to recognise the PR value of what Rich Turrin has dubbed innovation theatre. Many institutions before them had cottoned on to the fact that it was a way to score easy points with the public and investors. Think of high impact campaigns featuring “the science bit” for L’Oréal’s Elvive shampoo or Tefal appliance ads: “We have the technology because we have the brains”.

    The financial sector has seen enough innovation theatre | Financial Times. The orignal reference is here.