Innovating to Oblivion.

Interesting review of the book,  "The Innovation Delusion," by Lee Vinsel and Andrew L. Russell. (Wall Street Journal, by way of Passive Voice.)

"America has been seduced by the false charms of innovation, causing us to chase novelty and pursue disruption while neglecting maintenance and infrastructure in both the public and private sectors."

 "... The result is, as the authors put it, an “unholy marriage of Silicon Valley’s conceit with the worst of Wall Street’s sociopathy."

The longer I own the store, the more I think that basic workaday ethic is what makes the world go around, and that all the get-rich-schemes and attitudes are a distraction and detraction. It's putting the promotional cart before the actual workhorse. It's fuzzy, feel-good, sound-good ideas taking the place of the hard work of true progress. We've become further and further removed from Main Street in favor of Wall Street.

Growing up in the 50s and 60s, stores were both stolid and solid. Workaday, unexciting, Babbit-ridiculed boring businesses. And yet these downtown drugstores and clothing stores and hardware stores provided livings for families and employees.

We gave that all away in our chase for cheap and for easy. We gave it away for the Next Big Thing, for Creative Destruction, for a "service economy" (whatever the fuck that is...servicing what?)

Everything need to be shiny now; every store must have an "image," every store spends more time trying to entice people in the doors by saying and showing surface glitter instead of actually--you know--stocking the store adequately, providing steady service, and living within their means.

I'm nearing retirement and this probably just cranky old man stuff, but the longer I'm in business (going on 40 years now) the more I think just running your store like a boring old Babbit is exactly what this world needs.