The Innovation Delusion: How Our Obsession with the New Has Disrupted the Work That Matters Most

The business world’s obsession with disruption has been applied far too liberally and broadly, argues Vinsel, a Virginia Tech assistant professor of science, technology, and society, and Russell, dean of arts and science at SUNY Polytechnic, in this resounding call for sane business growth. The Silicon Valley ethos of “failing faster” can work for website and app developers, for whom profit margins are high and the costs of failure are low—but it’s terrible advice for people building tangible items. Tired of the “move fast and break things” ethos, the authors decry the overselling of “design thinking” as a credo, especially in nonbusiness fields like education. Vinsel and Russell profile businesspeople, including Andrea Goulet, CEO of the “software mending” firm Corgibytes, and Yury Izrailevsky and Ariel Tseitlin, formerly Netflix’s directors of, respectively, cloud solutions and systems architecture, whom they celebrate for being concerned with upkeep rather than invention, and visit a maintenance managers’ convention to learn about this profession’s mindset. Readers will come away from Vinsel and Russell’s urgent and illuminating primer with a new perspective on the importance of maintenance as well as innovation in business. (Sept.)