There's something deeply unserious about the way we talk about innovation in 2025. Not just unserious. Actively delusional. We've created an ecosystem dedicated to celebrating the idea of progress while systematically avoiding the messy, unglamorous work of actually making things better. And nowhere is this more obvious than in the widening chasm between how advertising awards define innovation and how innovation actually functions in the world.
The word 'innovation' itself has become a kind of linguistic bitcoin. Inflated in value through speculation, divorced from any underlying utility, traded by people who fundamentally misunderstand what they're buying and selling. We've turned innovation into content, and like most content, it's designed more for engagement than effectiveness.
The word 'innovation' itself has become a kind of linguistic bitcoin. Inflated in value through speculation, divorced from any underlying utility, traded by people who fundamentally misunderstand what they're buying and selling.
The 120-Second God Complex
Start with the fundamental unit of proof in awards shows. Innovation lives or dies by the case study film. You have 120 seconds to construct a narrative arc that makes jurors feel like they've witnessed magic. The formula is predictable: establish a problem (climate change, social inequality, brand awareness), introduce a technological solution (usually involving "AI," "blockchain," or "real-time data"), and conclude with beautiful people having beautiful experiences with your beautiful prototype.
It's the Hero's Journey for the TED Talk generation. Or in 2025 terms, LinkedIn influencer double-spaced line poetry set to a Hans Zimmer score. A storytelling format so polished and robotically mannered, it's become indistinguishable from parody. Every case study promises to "change the conversation" or "shift the paradigm," as if culture was just waiting for the right combination of heartstring-tugging and buzzword deployment to transform itself.
The industry has become so addicted to this format that we've confused documentation with development. We're living in a world where the ability to explain why something matters has become more valuable than the thing itself actually mattering. It's PowerPoint as epistemology. If you can make a compelling slide deck about your AI that turns electricity consumption data into currency for appliance purchases, then surely the algorithm must be changing lives, right?
We've confused documentation with development. We're living in a world where the ability to explain why something matters has become more valuable than the thing itself actually mattering. It's PowerPoint as epistemology.
We've created an entire professional class of people whose job is to make unconvincing things sound convincing, and then we've started mistaking their competence at that job for competence at the actual job they're supposed to be doing.
Meanwhile, actual innovation... Innovation that fundamentally alters human capabilities or relationships. Innovation that creates new categories of human experiences. Rarely announces itself with swelling orchestral music and carefully curated diversity casting. When the iPhone launched, Steve Jobs didn't need to over-explain why it mattered. People just stopped buying BlackBerrys. When TikTok's algorithm cracked the code on infinite scroll dopamine delivery, teenagers didn't need case studies to understand its cultural significance. They just stopped opening Instagram. When Ozempic accidentally revolutionized weight loss, Novo Nordisk didn't commission a heartwarming documentary. People just started losing 15% of their body weight, and the entire diet industry had to reconsider its existence.
Real innovation can be boring at first glance, illegible to anyone who wasn't there for the problem it solved. It can be utilitarian, iterative, and completely uninterested in your emotional response to its origin story.
But here's where the narrative gets complicated: sometimes the performance is the product. Sometimes the theater is the innovation. Patagonia's "Don't Buy This Jacket" campaign wasn't just clever marketing—it fundamentally challenged how brands communicate with consumers. The performance became a permission structure for an entirely new category of corporate activism. The case study film didn't just document change; it created it.
The Boutique Trap (And Its Escape Routes)
Perhaps more troubling is our fetishization of the unrepeatable gesture. We've convinced ourselves that true creativity requires uniqueness. That the highest award honor goes to the idea that also happens to never be done again. This year's innovation darling is a one-off: AKQA's "Sounds Right" campaign that officially launched "NATURE" as an artist on Spotify. A beautiful gesture that’s impossible to repeat. You can only make Nature an artist once. You can’t scale it into a systematic conservation solution. It’s innovation as performance art.
We reward these stunty projects because they feel like art—precious, singular, unreproducible. Although, to be fair, conventional wisdom can get it wrong when the work is exactly what's needed to crack open a new category. Virgin Atlantic's first upper-class cabin in 1984 was pure theater (passengers could enjoy a drink at the bar and mingle or book themselves with one of the onboard hairdressers and beauticians). A one-off gesture of defiance against airline mediocrity. But that gesture didn't just win awards. It forced an entire industry to reconsider what air travel could be. Creating emotional differentiation that justified higher prices and built fierce brand loyalty among passengers who felt they were part of something special rather than just another commercial transaction. The systems followed the inspiration.
The real problem isn't that we celebrate these moments with awards. It's that we stop there. We applaud the gesture and ignore the grinding work of turning inspiration into systems. Real innovation requires both the visionary leap and the systematic follow-through. It requires building something that works for one user, then ten, then ten million, without the original creator having to personally intervene each time.
The real problem isn't that we celebrate these moments with awards. It's that we stop there. We applaud the gesture and ignore the grinding work of turning inspiration into systems. Real innovation requires both the visionary leap and the systematic follow-through.
The genius of Uber wasn't the idea of calling a car with your phone. It was building a system that could coordinate millions of rides without anyone at headquarters having to manually dispatch drivers. But here's what we miss: before Uber became a system, it was a boutique idea. Travis Kalanick and Garrett Camp literally couldn't get a cab in Paris. The first version was an email to a hundred friends. The gesture preceded the system.
Yet even Uber's story reveals the false dichotomy. The company's real innovation wasn't pure system-building. It was systems wrapped in narrative. Every surge pricing controversy, every regulatory battle, every driver protest became part of the performance. Uber understood that in the modern economy, you're not just building a product; you're building a cultural artifact. The theater and the technology were inseparable.
The Systems Invisibility Problem
We've created an award culture that mistakes novelty for utility, confusing the unprecedented with the important. But there's a deeper failure in that we haven't learned how to see systems as creative. We act like "systems don't have protagonists," but that's increasingly untrue.
Patrick Collison didn't just build Stripe; he built a narrative around why payment systems matter. The early Shopify team didn't just create e-commerce tools; they created a mythology around empowering entrepreneurs. Even Uber, for all its eventual sins, initially won cultural acclaim not just for its app but for the story it told about urban mobility.
The problem isn't that we can't celebrate systems. It's that we're intellectually lazy about it. We know how to recognize a beautiful campaign film. We don't know how to recognize a beautiful API. We understand emotional resonance; we don't usually understand elegant system design. So we default to rewarding what we can easily comprehend: the singular gesture, the unrepeatable moment, the thing that makes us feel something in a conference room.
The Power Game Nobody Talks About
But let's be honest about why this persists. It's not just intellectual laziness. It's also economics. The innovation theater exists because everyone involved has a vested interest in keeping the show running.
Award committees need submissions to justify their existence and conference sponsorships. The more categories they create—Innovation in AI, Innovation in Sustainability, Innovation in Purpose-Driven Blockchain—the more entry fees they collect. Many are not incentivized to ask hard questions about impact when the business model depends on volume.
Agencies need awards to help win new business and justify their fees. A Grand Prix in Innovation is worth more in new business pitches than a dozen successful but unsexy system implementations. Creative directors build careers on Lions, not load times. The theater isn't a bug; it's the business model.
Clients, particularly marketing executives, know awards can justify budgets and advance careers. A CMO's tenure averages what these days, 18 months? You can absolutely win an innovation award in that time. Much tougher to build lasting systems. The ‘game’ rewards quick wins and spectacular gestures because the people commissioning the work often won't be around to see the long-term results.
Even jurors have skin in the game. Being selected for a prestigious jury is currency in our industry. You're not expected to be there as a capital ’s’ skeptic. You're there to be inspired, to find work that justifies the entire enterprise. Nobody wants to be the juror who gave zero awards because nothing actually worked.
This isn't a conspiracy. It's just incentive alignment. Everyone benefits from the status quo, except the people these innovations supposedly serve—actual people trying to navigate actual problems in the actual world.
This isn't a conspiracy. It's just incentive alignment. Everyone benefits from the status quo, except the people these innovations supposedly serve—actual people trying to navigate actual problems in the actual world.
The Aspiration Economy's Hidden Virtues
Here's where the dysfunction becomes more apparent: we've built an ecosystem where good intentions absolve technical weakness. We judge based on aspiration, not achievement. On what a project claims to do, not what it actually accomplishes.
In technology, markets provide ruthless quality control. If your app crashes, users delete it. If your algorithm discriminates, you get sued. If your product doesn't work, you go bankrupt. But markets aren't the only form of quality control, and they're certainly not the most imaginative.
What if, and stay with me here, the "aspiration economy" serves a different but necessary function? What if celebrating ambitious failures creates the psychological safety necessary for genuine breakthroughs? The Wright brothers crashed a lot of planes. SpaceX exploded rockets. Sometimes rewarding the attempt, even the failed attempt, creates the conditions for eventual success.
The issue isn't that we reward aspiration. It's that we've stopped following up. We give the award, write the press release, and move on to the next shiny object. We don't circle back to ask: Did that prototype ever ship? Did that pilot program scale? Did those good intentions ever meet the messy reality of implementation?
The issue isn't that we reward aspiration. It's that we've stopped following up. We give the award, write the press release, and move on to the next shiny object. We don't circle back to ask: Did that prototype ever ship? Did that pilot program scale? Did those good intentions ever meet the messy reality of implementation?
Beyond Better Metrics: A Practical Path Forward
The real insight here isn't that scalable innovation is inherently superior to singular creative acts. It's that our current reward systems create perverse incentives that may be limiting both types of innovation. But saying we need "better metrics" is its own form of PowerPoint epistemology. Here's what we might help:
Longitudinal Accountability: What if innovation awards come with mandatory two-year follow-ups? Did the innovation scale? Did it sustain? Did it matter? Create a public database tracking the lifecycle of award-winning innovations. Let the data speak louder than the case studies.
Portfolio Evaluation: Stop judging innovations in isolation. What happens when we evaluate agencies and clients on their innovation portfolios over time? What percentage of their "innovations" are still in use three years later? This rewards both moonshots and incremental improvements.
User Voice Integration: Build systematic feedback loops from actual users into the judging process. Not focus groups or sentiment analysis. Real longitudinal user data. If an innovation claims to improve people's lives, shouldn't those people have a vote in whether it wins an award?
Economic Transparency: Require submissions to disclose total investment (development, marketing, and promotion) versus actual user adoption. Let's see the real cost per impacted life, not just the beautiful outcomes reel.
Hybrid Categories: Create awards that explicitly reward the journey from boutique to scale. Celebrate not just the initial innovation but the unsexy work of making it real. Have categories for "Best Scale Achievement" and "Most Elegant System Design" alongside "Most Creative Concept."
These aren't perfect solutions. They're starting points for a more honest conversation about what we're really rewarding and why.
The Both/And Future
The question isn't whether to reward creative gestures or reward scalable systems. The question is whether we're mature enough to recognize that innovation requires both. And that the relationship between them is more nuanced than our current discourse allows.
Sometimes performance enables systems. Sometimes systems enable performance. Sometimes they're the same thing, viewed from different angles. The iPhone was both a beautiful object and a platform. Tesla was both a status symbol and a charging network. TikTok was both a creative playground and an algorithmic panopticon.
The best innovations will come from people who realize you don't have to choose between creativity and practicality. You need both. It'll be found in organizations mature enough to play both games simultaneously. Building the systems while performing the narrative. Creating the spectacle while solving the problem.
The best innovations will come from people who realize you don't have to choose between creativity and practicality. You need both.
Because right now, we're trapped in a theater of our own making, giving standing ovations to our own reflections, mistaking the sound of our own clapping for the sound of actual change. And outside the theater, in the real world where people actually live and work and struggle, the future is being built by people who are too busy building it to apply for awards.
Maybe it's time we started paying attention to them instead. Or better yet, maybe it's time we figured out how to bring them inside the theater. Not to make them perform, but to teach us what real innovation looks like when the cameras stop rolling.
