By Katharine Schwab

凯瑟琳·施瓦布(Katharine Schwab)

For as long as it has existed, people have been trying to replicate the magic of Silicon Valley, to capture some of its ineffable ability to produce true innovation — inventions that have changed many people’s lives for the better. But despite its real claim to innovation, Silicon Valley has also come to represent something less tangible. Andrew Russell, professor of history and dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at SUNY Polytechnic Institute, and Lee Vinsel, a professor in the Department of Science, Technology, and Society at Virginia Tech, call it “innovation speak.”

只要它存在，人们就一直在尝试复制硅谷的魔力，以捕捉其产生真正创新的不可言喻的能力-发明改变了许多人的生活。 但是，尽管硅谷真正宣称要创新，但它也已经代表了不那么实际的东西。 纽约州立大学理工学院的历史学教授兼艺术与科学学院院长安德鲁·罗素(Andrew Russell)和弗吉尼亚理工大学科学，技术与社会学系教授Lee Vinsel称其为“创新演讲”。

The two are the author of a new book, called The Innovation Delusion, that explores the deep problems with the Silicon Valley-inspired mindset that shiny new things can solve all of society’s problems. Instead, Russell and Vinsel advocate for what they call a “maintenance mindset,” which focuses on keeping the technology we already have up and running rather than always looking for the next new thing. Russell and Vinsel run a research network and conference series called the Maintainers, which focuses on values of upkeep, repair, and sustainable labor.

这两人是一本名为《创新妄想》的新书的作者，该书探讨了硅谷启发的思维方式的深层问题，即闪亮的新事物可以解决社会所有问题。 相反，拉塞尔(Russell)和文塞尔(Vinsel)倡导他们所谓的“维护思维方式”，该思维方式着眼于保持我们已经拥有并运行的技术，而不是总是寻找下一个新事物。 罗素(Russell)和文塞尔(Vinsel)主持了一个名为“维护者(Maintainers)”的研究网络和会议系列，其重点是维护，维修和可持续劳动的价值。

While Russell and Vinsel believe that we need a place in culture for people to take risks and try new things, they see danger in exporting a fail-fast mentality to places that aren’t suited for it, such as government, traditional businesses, and infrastructure. In those areas, they argue that the aspiration to innovate is simply a delusion.

尽管罗素(Russell)和文塞尔(Vinsel)认为我们需要在文化中占有一席之地，以便人们承担风险并尝试新事物，但他们认为将失败快速的心态输出到不适合它的地方(例如政府，传统企业和基础设施。 他们认为，在那些领域中，创新的愿望只是一种幻想。

The following interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

为了简洁和清楚起见，以下采访已经过编辑。

Fast Company: What is the innovation delusion and how do you think it’s impacting society right now?

Fast Company：什么是创新错觉？您认为它现在如何影响社会？

Andrew Russell: The innovation delusion is the mistaken notion that the creation of new things, cloaked in the buzzwords of innovation, are the best and only path to resolve all kinds of problems that we face in society, from our personal lives to our businesses or universities to infrastructure at large.

安德鲁·拉塞尔(Andrew Russell)：创新妄想是一种错误的观念，即以创新术语笼罩的新事物的创造是解决我们从个人生活到企业或社会的各种社会问题的最佳且唯一的途径大学到整个基础设施。

Lee Vinsel: We like to make a distinction between what we call actual innovation and what we call innovation-speak, and innovation-speak is this way of thinking and talking about technological and business change that’s developed in the last 50 years or so. There’s two problems. The first is that it doesn’t produce results, necessarily. We’re talking more and more about innovation, but there’s no evidence that there is more and more innovation. And meanwhile, it also distracts us from really crucial things in our culture, including just the work of keeping things going and the people who do that work.

Lee Vinsel：我们希望在所谓的实际创新和所谓的创新口语之间进行区分，而创新口语就是这种思考和谈论近50年来发展的技术和业务变化的方式。 有两个问题。 首先是它不一定会产生结果。 我们越来越多地谈论创新，但是没有证据表明有越来越多的创新。 同时，这也分散了我们对我们文化中真正重要的事情的注意力，包括仅使事情继续进行的工作以及从事这项工作的人员。

FC: So this talk about innovation versus the actual practice of innovation — why is it important to differentiate between those two, and how did that distinction get collapsed?

FC：所以这是关于创新与实际创新的讨论-为什么区分这两者很重要，并且这种区分是如何崩溃的？

LV: I think the reality is that the way we’ve come to talk about innovation and technological change is a theory of society that was developed by economists and business-school thinkers and consultants since the post-World War II period. I think if we don’t make that distinction, we just take it as natural that there’s some kind of tight alignment between the talk and the thing.

LV：我认为现实是，我们谈论创新和技术变革的方式是自二战后由经济学家，商学院思想家和顾问开发的一种社会理论。 我认为，如果我们不进行区分，那么我们自然会认为谈话与事物之间存在某种紧密的联系。

AR: One reason why innovation-speak has become so prominent is in part a product of technological change and actual innovation being so successful and having such an outsized impact on people’s lives. The examples that we like to use include medicine, whether it’s things like vaccines or a nonpharmaceutical intervention — standards of cleanliness in the hospitals that are a century old. Innovations or inventions in technology as well, whether it’s electric power, internal combustion engines, airplanes, digital technologies closer to the present — those things have made measurable impacts on people’s lives and society and the national global economy. But it’s easy also to overstate those things and then just to extrapolate on those positive examples and to say, we have a template for what we should do in all times and places.

AR：讲创新之所以变得如此突出的一个原因，部分原因是技术变革和实际创新如此成功，并对人们的生活产生了巨大影响。 我们喜欢使用的示例包括药物，无论是疫苗还是非药物干预手段，这些都是百年历史的医院的清洁标准。 技术方面的创新或发明，无论是电力，内燃机，飞机，更接近当今的数字技术，这些东西都对人们的生活和社会以及全球国民经济产生了可观的影响。 但是也很容易夸大这些事情，然后仅仅推断那些积极的例子，并且说，我们有一个模板，可以随时随地做什么。

硅谷现象 (A Silicon Valley Phenomenon)

FC: Where does Silicon Valley fit into this, both on the real innovation side and on the innovation-speak side?

FC：无论是在真正的创新方面还是在创新方面，硅谷都适合于此？

LV: I think innovation-speak — this way of talking — really heats up in the ’70s and ’80s. Silicon Valley sits both at the hub of actual innovation and innovation-speak. When people start writing books about Silicon Valley in the late 1970s and early ’80s, it’s basically like how-to manuals for local planners to recreate Silicon Valley, because there is so much economic growth and technological change happening there. It’s seen as the bright thing that we should all emulate. And it’s everywhere from the Midwest to New York City with Silicon Alley to Australia with Kangaroo Valley — everyone wants to recreate Silicon Valley.

LV：我认为讲创新的方式实际上是在70年代和80年代升温的。 硅谷既是实际创新的中心，也是创新的中心。 当人们在1970年代末和80年代初开始撰写有关硅谷的书籍时，基本上就像当地规划师如何重新创建硅谷的使用手册，因为那里发生了太多的经济增长和技术变革。 这被认为是我们所有人都应该效仿的美好事物。 从中西部到拥有硅谷的纽约到拥有袋鼠谷的澳大利亚，到处都是-每个人都想重建硅谷。

On the other hand, there’s always been so much hype around digital technology. The technology has never actually lived up to the hype to the degree that Silicon Valley now is the place where all these new ventures are constantly producing hype about the potentials of their technology. And that’s often couched in terms of innovation. I have a friend who works at Bloomberg news — every press release they get from companies talk about how innovative the company is, you know? So I think that Silicon Valley is beautifully at the center of both actual innovation and this way of talking.

另一方面，围绕数字技术的炒作总是如此。 实际上，这项技术从未像现在这样大肆宣传，以致于硅谷现在是所有这些新创企业不断对其技术潜力进行大肆宣传的地方。 在创新方面，这通常很重要。 我有一个朋友在彭博新闻社工作-他们从公司获得的每份新闻稿都谈到公司的创新能力，您知道吗？ 因此，我认为硅谷是实际创新和这种交谈方式的中心。

AR: There’s an element of these emulation manuals or the attempt to replicate the special sauce or the secret sauce as people say about Silicon Valley — there’s some huge holes in those stories. We’re trained as historians, and we’re trained on the tradition that looks at technological systems holistically, whether it’s trains or computers or software. The emulation manuals about how to make your own Silicon Valley usually leave out the unsavory aspects of Silicon Valley and the actual keys to its success, which include massive federal subsidies, massive amounts of undocumented labor, huge disparities between the haves and the have-nots, irreversible environmental damage, the list goes on and on. Scholars have written about this. That work tends to get dismissed by people who were looking to get funding or just mobilize people around this vision of just getting the good and not reckoning with the costs.

AR：这些仿真手册中有一些内容，或者像人们对硅谷所说的那样，试图复制特殊的调味料或秘密调味料-这些故事中有很多漏洞。 我们接受过历史学家的培训，我们接受了从整体上看待技术系统(无论是火车，计算机还是软件)的传统培训。 关于如何创建自己的硅谷的仿真手册通常忽略了硅谷的不利方面及其成功的关键，其中包括大量的联邦补贴，大量的无证劳动力，贫富之间的巨大差异。 ，不可逆转的环境破坏，这个清单还在不断。 学者们已经写过关于这一点。 那些希望获得资金或只是动员人们追求仅获得利益而不考虑成本的愿景的人往往会驳回这项工作。

FC: The book is framed around two visions. On one side, there are these values of “innovation” and progress and growth. And then on the other side, there’s this other core value of maintenance and the maintenance mindset. Can you talk to me about how these two buckets work in opposition to each other, in particular around growth and the cost of growth?

FC：这本书围绕着两种愿景。 一方面，存在着“创新”，进步与成长的价值观。 另一方面，还有维护的另一个核心价值和维护思想。 您能和我谈谈这两个桶是如何相互对立的，特别是围绕增长和增长成本吗？

LV: Part of the reason that distinction between actual innovation and innovation-speak is so important to us is because we’re not Luddites. We like our fancy new gadgets, and we like technological progress. But we are trying to rebalance the way we think about these things. As we build out these modern systems, whether it’s electricity or the internet, or all of the businesses we built on top of the internet, like Amazon Web Services, those are all things that we have to then keep up if we want to keep that quality of life. I think if we focus too much on the shiny new thing, and in that introduction of new stuff, we can easily overlook that important labor.

LV：真正的创新和讲创新的区别对我们如此重要的部分原因是因为我们不是Luddites。 我们喜欢花哨的新产品，也喜欢技术进步。 但是，我们正在尝试重新平衡思考这些事情的方式。 当我们构建这些现代系统时，无论是电力还是互联网，还是我们在互联网之上构建的所有业务(如Amazon Web Services)，如果要保持这些功能，我们都必须保持这些。生活质量。 我认为，如果我们过多地关注闪亮的新事物，并且在引入新事物时，我们很容易忽略了这一重要工作。

AR: It’s not an either/or but can be a both/and. Some of the firms we’ve interviewed and the people we talked to who work in maintenance really rely on new technologies or innovative approaches, whether it’s using artificial intelligence and predictive analytics and the internet of things — all these terms that are buzzwords if they’re not in context. But they use them for a particular purpose, which is to keep systems going. There can be a kind of resolution between these two concepts. Innovation and maintenance don’t have to be opposites. They can work together. But what’s needed is to take a step back and think about how they can work together instead of just putting blind faith in the shiny object. And then if that happens to the detriment of everything else, that’s where the problems appear. That’s when you see bridges collapsing, that’s when you see schools or organizations falling apart due to inattention of the basics — not the new stuff, but the basics that keep things going.

AR：它不是一个或非，但可以是一个/非。 我们采访过的一些公司以及与维修工作人员交谈过的人实际上都依赖于新技术或创新方法，无论它是使用人工智能，预测分析和物联网，否则所有这些术语都是流行词​​。不在上下文中。 但是他们将它们用于特定目的，即保持系统正常运行。 这两个概念之间可能存在一种解决方案。 创新和维护不一定是对立的。 他们可以一起工作。 但是，我们需要退后一步，思考一下它们如何协同工作，而不是仅仅对发光的物体抱有盲目的信念。 然后，如果那一切损害了其他一切，那就是问题所在。 那是当您看到桥梁倒塌时，那是当您看到学校或组织由于基础知识的疏忽而瓦解时，这些基础知识不是新事物，而是使事情持续发展的基础知识。

通过激励建立的系统 (A System Built Through Incentives)

FC: To your point around how these two pieces can work together, the Silicon Valley software giants, Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc., are actually really good at maintenance. A lot of what they do is just to keep their services running and reliable. But you also highlight some of these companies’ problems with growth and focus on always coming up with something new. How do you square these two? Obviously these companies are huge and so, you know, they contain multitudes. Some of these companies that maybe are the hallmark of the kinds of downsides you were just describing are also really good at maintenance.

FC：关于这两个部分如何协同工作的观点，硅谷软件巨头Google，Facebook，Amazon等实际上非常擅长维护。 他们所做的很多事情只是保持他们的服务运行和可靠。 但是，您也要强调其中一些公司的成长问题，并专注于始终提出新的想法。 您如何平方这两个？ 显然，这些公司规模巨大，所以您知道它们包含很多。 这些公司中有些可能只是您刚才描述的缺点的标志，它们在维护方面也很出色。

AR: They have incentives to behave the way that they’re behaving. I think that’s a big part of the problem. So they have quarterly earnings reports that traditionally have been really the yardstick for how they perform. There’s been some pushback about using quarterly earnings reports in that way. Those companies have used a playbook that really features new stuff, new stuff, new stuff all the time. I think if they felt that it was a better strategy to attract investment through showing off their good maintenance practices, they would be doing more of that, but the incentives are skewed. I think they’re responding somewhat in a rational sense to the incentives that they have in front of them.

AR：他们有动机去表现自己的行为方式。 我认为这是问题的很大一部分。 因此，他们拥有季度收益报告，这些报告传统上一直是衡量其业绩的标准。 以这种方式使用季度收益报告存在一些退缩。 这些公司使用的剧本一直都在以新内容，新内容和新内容为特色。 我认为，如果他们认为通过炫耀其良好的维护习惯来吸引投资是一种更好的策略，他们会做更多的事情，但是激励措施却存在偏差。 我认为他们在某种程度上对他们面前的激励措施做出了合理的回应。

LV: I think your own point about the fact that these are enormous entities at this point is right on. The most profitable part of Amazon for a long time has been Amazon Web Services, right? That’s a maintenance practice. They’re competing on uptime and quality of service. I’ve met a lot of Amazon engineers that are just keeping the ship up, on track, and afloat. But that’s very different than the image we have of Bezos and him being into space and roboticized warehouses and all these things. When you get these very large companies in that way, there’s the upper end, where people are focusing just on the new stuff. And then most of how they’re making money is on these very boring processes.

LV：我认为关于这一点的事实您是正确的。 长期以来，亚马逊最赚钱的部分是亚马逊网络服务，对吗？ 那是维护习惯。 他们在正常运行时间和服务质量方面进行竞争。 我遇到了很多亚马逊工程师，他们只是在保持运输，跟踪和浮动。 但这与贝索斯(Bezos)和他进入太空，机械化仓库以及所有这些东西的印象完全不同。 当您以这种方式获得这些非常大的公司时，就会出现高端产品，而人们只会专注于新产品。 然后，他们大部分的赚钱方式都是在这些非常无聊的过程中进行的。

That’s very different than the startup world. If all you’re doing is trying to create something that you can sell to one of these companies, you have very little incentive to think through the long-term costs or even the maintenance costs of the thing you’re trying to develop. So it’s how these different-sized entities are reacting to incentives.

那与初创公司世界大不相同。 如果您所做的只是尝试创建可以出售给其中一家公司的产品，那么您几乎没有动力去考虑您要开发的产品的长期成本甚至维护成本。 这就是这些不同规模的实体对激励措施的React。

出口创业文化的风险 (The Risks of Exporting Startup Culture)

FC: So this is really fundamentally about changing incentives. What is a better way of thinking about incentives for a new company, or someone with what they think is a brilliant idea? There’s the incentive of changing the world, which is cliché and overwrought at this point. There’s being bought by a giant. And I guess there’s growth. How does long-term thinking play into that from a more practical perspective?

FC：所以这实际上是从根本上改变激励机制。 有什么更好的方法来考虑对新公司或某人的激励措施？ 有改变世界的动机，这是陈词滥调和过度努力的。 被一个巨人买了。 而且我想还有增长。 从更实际的角度来看，长期思考如何发挥作用？

LV: I’m actually okay with like the startup world being the startup world. I don’t necessarily want to change that. That’s okay by me that you have this space of like high risk, high reward, people trying out new things.

LV：我真的可以接受像创业世界这样的创业世界。 我不一定要更改它。 对我而言，您可以拥有这样的空间，例如高风险，高回报，人们尝试新事物。

AR: I agree with Lee that the startup world is going to be the startup world and changing that incentive structure is not what we’re trying to do here. But what we do try and point out in the book is to ask people to answer for themselves the question of what do they find to be valuable and what do they want to preserve. If I was to coach an entrepreneur, someone making a startup, I think the question for the past generation or so has been, what do you want to disrupt? You could imagine a different way of asking the question: What do you want to preserve? It feels like there’s some space there in the goals of people doing startups to ask questions a different way and to try and provide some value for people in different ways.

AR：我同意Lee的观点，即创业世界将成为创业世界，改变这种激励结构并不是我们在此要做的。 但是我们在书中试图指出的是要求人们自己回答以下问题：他们认为有价值的东西是什么，想要保存什么。 如果我要指导企业家，创业者，我认为过去一代左右的问题是，您想破坏什么？ 您可以想象出一种不同的询问方式：您想保留什么？ 感觉人们在创业公司的目标中有一定的空间，可以以不同的方式提出问题并尝试以不同的方式为人们提供价值。

LV: It’s more of when we start to model other parts of our culture — whether it’s General Electric or universities or government, when you start to model all these other parts of our culture on Silicon Valley startup culture, that’s where we really are running a risk. GE tried to model itself on Silicon Valley startups? That is just delusion in the deepest way. But two years later, their stock was in the garbage and it didn’t work at all. I think that with design thinking and all these things where we’re all supposed to be like Silicon Valley startups, that’s the risk. The risk to the broader culture is that we all think we’re supposed to be like a bunch of 20-year-olds living on pizza who are going to burn out in a couple months.

LV：更多的是我们开始对文化的其他部分建模(无论是通用电气，大学还是政府)，当您开始在硅谷创业文化中对文化的所有其他部分进行建模时，我们才真正在这里开展业务。风险。 GE试图以硅谷的初创公司为模型吗？ 这只是最深层的幻想。 但是两年后，他们的存货被浪费了，根本没有用。 我认为，以设计思维以及所有这些我们都应该像硅谷初创公司一样的方式，这就是风险。 对更广泛文化的风险在于，我们所有人都认为我们应该像一群生活在披萨上的20岁年轻人，他们将在几个月内烧光。

AR: I think what we want to do is to give [companies like GE] an out in a way, and to say, we really need to pay more attention to the things that people have taken for granted, to long-term strategies. We shouldn’t be distracted by the allure of being what GE tried to call itself: the 124-year-old software startup. We should just recognize that it doesn’t feel right because it’s not right. And it’s okay to just be 124 years old and make really good products and pay attention to the basics and reward and compensate the managers and the staff in the company that create experiences or products that people can rely on. Our book is really trying to make that case, not only for a company like GE, but to say, we understand, we all understand intuitively that [maintenance] is desirable. We exercise or we try and eat right. We try and keep up with our gadgets and our stuff around our houses, because we understand that maintenance and upkeep are important. So let’s just extend that knowledge into other walks of life that are, as we try and show, a little out of bounds and skew too much towards this delusion that new stuff and innovation will just save our bacon.

AR：我认为我们要做的是以某种方式给予[GE等公司]一席之地，也就是说，我们确实需要更多地关注人们认为理所当然的事情以及长期战略。 通用电气试图称呼自己的魅力不会让我们分心：这家拥有124年历史的软件初创公司。 我们应该只认识到感觉不对，因为它不对。 并且只有124岁的年龄，可以制造出真正好的产品，并注意基础知识，并奖励和奖励公司中创造出人们可以依靠的经验或产品的管理人员和员工，这是可以的。 我们的书实际上是在试图使这种情况发生，不仅对于像GE这样的公司，而且要说，我们理解，我们都直观地理解[维护]是可取的。 我们锻炼身体或尝试正确饮食。 我们努力与房子周围的小工具和东西保持同步，因为我们知道维护和保养很重要。 因此，让我们将这些知识扩展到其他领域，正如我们尝试和展示的那样，这些领域有些超出界限，并且偏向于这种错觉，以至于新事物和创新只会节省我们的培根。

寻找平衡 (Finding Balance)

FC: You’ve said that some things are out of balance and skewed toward this delusion. What pushes us back into balance? Is it regulation? You write in the book that the champions of innovation really don’t want to be regulated, and their primary reason is that it will stamp out innovation. What role do you see regulation playing, particularly within Silicon Valley innovation-speak-land, and with the big tech companies where it’s primarily focused right now?

FC：您已经说过有些事情不平衡，并且倾向于这种错觉。 是什么促使我们恢复平衡？ 是规定吗？ 您在书中写道，创新的拥护者真的不想受到监管，其主要原因是创新会淘汰创新。 您如何看待法规的作用，特别是在硅谷的创新之地以及目前主要关注的大型科技公司中？

AR: Regulation is an expression of what the society deems valuable. With companies, typically regulations have been especially effective in trying to force companies to reckon with externalities, things that they just don’t have to deal with. So pollution is the classical example, but there’s others, like safety. I think we’re not the only ones pointing at some of the cultural damage and societal damage. That’s what you see when you see these guys marched onto Capitol Hill. People are increasingly concerned about those aspects of social media companies, misinformation, all that good stuff. We get the regulation we vote for in a sense. That’s how the system works. It’s kind of a checks and balances in my view. In the last generation, the way it’s been set up is to let the private sector rip and then deal with problems afterwards. I think we’re in a moment where that is being called into question. How much state and federal regulators and international regulators change that mode of operation is kind of an unanswered question right now.

AR：监管是社会认为有价值的一种表达。 对于公司而言，法规通常在试图迫使公司考虑外部性时特别有效，而外部性只是他们不必处理的事情。 因此，污染是典型的例子，但还有其他一些例子，例如安全性。 我认为我们并不是唯一指出某些文化破坏和社会破坏的人。 当您看到这些家伙踏上国会山时，便会看到这些。 人们越来越关注社交媒体公司的那些方面，错误的信息以及所有这些好东西。 在某种意义上，我们得到了我们投票支持的法规。 这就是系统的工作方式。 在我看来，这是一种制衡。 在上一代中，它的设置方式是让私营部门撕裂，然后再处理问题。 我认为我们正在对此提出质疑。 目前有多少州和联邦监管机构以及国际监管机构改变这种运作方式，这是一个尚未回答的问题。

LV: I think the other structure is financial. There’s been a lot of chatter about what’s called shareholder value, which is a philosophy that was developed in the ’80s. It becomes a financial incentive in a lot of ways, which is just to maximize the value for stockholders on a quarterly basis. That’s all about growth, right? It’s all about the rush for growth. This is something too that’s being questioned. The Business Roundtable of all places came out and said, “This is not sustainable. This doesn’t work for society.” I think that’s the kind of stuff that has to change. If you can take your foot off the gas a little bit and stop worrying about growth, growth, growth, growth, then you can have some more long-term thinking about what you need to do to sustain things environmentally as well as organizationally. You can also start to reward those people who are doing that sustaining work and not just focus on the bright shiny innovators within the company all the time.

LV：我认为另一种结构是财务。 关于所谓的股东价值的讨论很多，这是80年代发展起来的一种哲学。 它在许多方面成为一种财务激励措施，只是在每个季度使股东的价值最大化。 这就是增长的全部，对不对？ 一切都是为了增长。 这也是受到质疑的东西。 所有地方的商业圆桌会议都出来了，并说 ：“这是不可持续的。 这对社会不起作用。” 我认为那是必须改变的东西。 如果您可以稍稍放开脚步，不再担心增长，增长，增长，增长，那么您可以对需要采取哪些措施进行长期思考，以实现环境和组织方面的可持续发展。 您也可以开始奖励那些从事这项持续工作的人，而不仅仅是一直专注于公司内部有才华的创新者。