Innovage: the purloined article

Here then is yet another new word, “innovage”, born of the marriage of “innovation” and “vintage”.

It’s really not all that surprising that so many new words are being thrown up every day. “The times they are a-changin’”, as the song goes, and in a really big way, be it in environmental, social, economic, or cultural terms. Perhaps all this name-spinning simply reflects the need we have to put new words to new realities so as to better come to grips with a changing world. Such is our urge to understand what’s going on about us that we sometimes rush ahead, coining a new word even before what it is meant to designate exists at all. Is this also the case for “innovage”? Does it refer to something that actually exists, or is it simply a fancy catchword? Does the word refer to a new economic reality, or merely to a vision of how things might be? Does it really help us to grasp the way the world is going?

It’s no mean question: naming an innovation profiles and focuses it, helping to bring it into the cultural mainstream. In what, for lack of a better definition of the postindustrial age we live in, is called “knowledge economy”, wealth is generated by ideas. A product’s value is determined by the life-style, information and meaning potential it incorporates. All that, plus memory. And of course, equally important for the product’s success is that all these contents be appreciated by consumers so that they may in turn be incorporated by them. The dynamics of any idea in fact depend on the relationship the individual or individuals who express it have with other individuals and how it links up with the ideas of these other individuals, who decree its success when they feel the idea akin or comparable to their own.
That’s why we may speak of an aesthetic and highly valuable relationship between objects that appear to reach out for the future and those that are loaded with a sense of the past, with the accumulated experiences of groups of individuals who identify with them.
But there’s more to it than that.

At least there is for anyone seriously committed to innovation. Vintage can undoubtedly be trendy. That is, it can be a sprinkling of something quaint and fashionable that makes for shortterm and short-lived added-value. If vintage were simply a comingback-into-fashion of a fossilised piece of history in the form, shape and style of objects of yesteryear, whatever may be deemed innovative about them upon their reappearance would last the short time span of a flimsy and fleeting fad and then fade away.
No, ideas cannot live and thrive on fashion alone. For something novel to be truly innovative it has to have far-reaching and durable cultural significance. Born as it is of the marriage of “vintage” and “innovation”, “innovage” may seem a bit of a faddish catchword. But it also conveys a deeper meaning in line with the times we are living in, namely the age of innovation. When thus considered, it suggests the sweeping structural changes we are undergoing in all fields, and at the same time how the past can help us cope with them. After all, the past and the future must at some point meet, and this could be a good reason for this neologism’s success.

Why? Because when a number of individuals are sold on a novelty and make it their own, thus decreeing its success, there are many interrelated factors at work; it’s not only a question of the message the object conveys as such, but also the source of the message; its credibility; its history; the sense of the future it embodies. If a firm puts out something new and original on the market, it must be careful to do so in an intelligible, credible and easily recognisable manner.

That’s essentially what a brand’s goodwill and hence value boils down to.

What’s expected of a firm when it launches a new idea is that it be convincing. A firm that proves to be thus reliable and trustworthy, improves its worth. Such credibility is born of a legacy of innovative ideas that have proven their worth because genuinely original, dependable, and steeped in authentic tradition. Whatever monetary value may be attached to such qualities and written up in the books, it’s but a pale reflection of their full and real value. There are indeed commodities whose value largely depends on these factors. Economists
in fact refer to them as “experiential commodities”, in so far as they’re esteemed for what they’re really worth only after consumption. If they’re consumed at all, it’s not because of any assigned value, but on the basis of past experience of the brand that has proven capable of fully delivering what it promises.

At the same time, a brand and the firm it represents to a large extent draw their credibility from the historical, geographical and cultural context out of which they have grown. The ecosystem of ideas that go to make up this context is a rich milieu and the firm’s historical background. Like any ecosystem, though, it is liable to pollution by stale and staid ideas and thoughts.
That’s why in an age where knowledge is a source of wealth, a firm should have as much concern for the quality of the cultural milieu in which it operates as for that of its products.

Any innovation is therefore as complex as its context makes it, which depends on a number of inseparably interwoven factors, including in what terms it is presented by its proponents; the relevance it has for others; the capacity its users have to make the most of it. Far from being a mere technological phenomenon, an innovation is more than ever a matter of culture, so that the narrative which surrounds it can be said to be no less important than its material contents, if indeed not more. A commodity that in addition to being new has a story to tell, the story of those who promote it and of where it comes from, and tells it in a sincere and comprehensible manner, stands a good chance of making the quantum leap to becoming a significant innovation and leaving its mark on society. Otherwise, it’s little more than noise piled up on more noise, of novelties whose scope stretches little beyond that of being passing fads.

Innovage then is a vision that makes for a synthesis. It expresses the desire to hold together the urgent need for renewal and the sense of such renewal. It’s the same process at work whenever there’s an innovative step forward, such as when the Bialetti Moka or Vespa were invented, two objects which have today risen to vintage status, acquiring a cultish appeal. As such, it’s a word that fits anything substantially durable yet formally changeable. It refers to that special moment in history when something fated to becoming an evergreen classic is born anew.