I do not believe the word means what you think it means. – Inigo Montoya
I do a fair amount of work in the IT industry, so it never fails to amuse when I visit companies’ “about” pages and see the ever-popular word “innovative.” It’s amusing because it typically reads as being tacked onto the existing copy. I would guess the process involved choosing three adjectives, one of which had to be “innovative” since that’s what technology companies are. Just add the magic word and – poof! – instant credibility as a technology company.
Therein lies the rub. A word as a word means nothing. What matters is how the word is lived out. It’s why I’ve strayed away from the concept of storytelling to “storydoing.” Words and actions have to match. If an IT company says it’s innovative, what does that mean? What is it doing? Can it back up its claim to innovation with proof? If so, why not talk about those things on its “about” page rather than dropping the tell-tale word?
Specifics matter, not abstractions. I say to focus on the concrete and on the details. No, a company doesn’t have to share all the specifics on an “about” page; the goal, after all, is to provide a broad scope and to give opportunities to dig deeper into the company’s information. I’m merely asking that the buzzwords, the feel-good, everybody’s-using-them words, be dropped because the words rarely mean what one thinks they mean. They are vacuous, and it’s time to stop using them on “about” pages and to start filling those pages with something more than hot air.
Image: Tom Coates (CC BY NC 2.0)