Innovation Is Nothing: A Look Inside Clinton Guru John Kao's Douchey "Manifesto"

Senator Hillary Clinton is about to unleash a whole new version of herself. Again. This one is going to be a Hillary thinking outside of the box (!), thinking laterally (!!), and using innovation to find the way forward to the path of tomorrow where success isn't a secret, but a global promise (!!!).

Nothing grates on nerves quite like corporate-speak. It's the lingo of Type A suits everywhere, proselytizing to the inspirationally challenged while exploiting their own clip-art fetishes. Senator Clinton was thinking synergistically when she hired "serial innovator" John Kao (pronounced "Kao") as part of her senatorial campaign, and paid him $70,000 to show her that with can-do attitude she will flow with jazz magic.

Kao is now on Clinton's presidential campaign (working pro bono) and his "Innovation Manifesto" is making the rounds in the bullpens. The "Innovation Manifesto" is built on "The 20 Statements," which I believe were until now, a secret known only to Mr. Kao, derived from vanished golden tablets buried in his backyard that were only readable through magic glasses sent from God. These incredibly mysterious, deep statements run the gamut from, "Innovation is an expression of an organized culture," to my favorite "Ideation instigates innovation." Apparently, alliterative assholes assume adults appreciate this kind of adolescent absurdity. All that's missing at this point is an Aleksey Vayner poster declaring that, "Impossible is nothing!"

Over all, this "manifesto" uses the word innovation upwards of sixty times, defined by Kao as "creativity applied with intention to create value." I think that means attempting to co-opt everything that's great, wring whatever money is possible out of it, and then move on to the next fad like a swarm of well-tailored locusts. By the time I got to the 25th use of the word "innovation," and was only on page three -- I was ready to proclaim that I did not think that word means what Kao thinks it means.

The whole packet is filled with these empty phrases: statements like "We are in the midst of a profound change from a logic of business based on economies of scale to economies of discovery," which I guess is like the more douchey version of saying that talking about music is now like dancing about architecture. After four pages of this tripe, my head begins to ache. Should you tilt towards towards the masochistic, you can click here [pdf] to read it for yourself.

Yet Kao does attempt to connect, mostly through diagrams and mixed metaphors. I enjoy that innovation "requires adopting a holistic perspective, and must be deeply embedded in the organization - not just layered on like mascara." Mascara? That's the best you can do in layering metaphors? Does Innovation all look terrible if too clumpy? He does slightly better with explaining how foresight is different from planning. Apparently, foresight is like how a "cruise missile finds its directions based on discovery, and on adapting to signals from the future" while planning is like how "a tradition ICBM locks in instructions from the past and flies towards an invariant goal." Mascara and missiles - the man reaches out to both genders!

How can YOU make yourself more of an innovator? I'm glad you asked! Well firstly you need to ask yourself "Where is the studio for innovation in most organizations?" If your answer is, "In Chelsea, above a leather bar, badly overpriced," you're still thinking inside the box. Secondly, you need to understand that "technology enables innovation." In other words, you better sign up for MySpace, Facebook, and Friendster, which we all know is just Facebook's older, fatter sister.

And finally, you need to learn how to play the saxophone. That's right, you need to become a jazz soloist, and stat! After all, "skilled jazz improvisers learn how to weave new material and principles into an ongoing flow of creativity that must satisfy audiences in order to succeed. Similarly, organizations must learn how to integrate new ingredients into the flow of innovative practices. In short, organizations must learn how to jam on the future." (His bold, natch.)

Get it? Jam on the future!

"The Innovation Manifesto" reads like the bits that weren't good enough to get into L. Ron Hubbard's Dianetics, and since that reads like a barely literate attempt at Bible fan fiction, that's saying a lot. It's entirely possible that copies of this lame attempt at "punk" corporate talk, landed in the Clinton staff's trash cans, but that this sort of faux-inspirational babble has gotten anywhere near a presidential campaign is alarming. It encapsulates everything I find wrong with Hillary's campaign, highlighting just how uninnovative it is. Innovation doesn't come in a pamphlet, even a $70,000 one, and it can't be squeezed into a stump speech here or there. I'd rather she hung a poster up on a wall with a kitten clinging to a softly lit tree branch and "Hang in there!" scrawled on the bottom. This is just pappy crap, and as long as anyone takes it seriously the paper shredder of the future is jammed, we're stuck in the box, and innovation is nothing.