I sparked an interesting discussion on innovation in a response to Geoffrey Moore's recent column in Sandhill.com. Please take a look at the discussion here on Mr Moore's site, and also at AlwaysOn.

And my apologies for not being in the thick of it, I've been involved in the "PR hand basket to hell" discussions the past couple of weeks, and also running around trying to get more stories and interviews for SVW.

However, I stick to my point which is that the term innovation must have within its meaning the quality of being disruptive. Innovation occurs when companies or individuals are forced to adopt a process because of the overwhelming economic value it creates and to ignore it would make it impossible to survive.

Just because the term innovation is trendy and is used by large companies such as HP or Microsoft, does not mean that they use it correctly.

I agree totally with Mr Moore when he says large enterprises have an interest in maintaining the status quo. It is called protecting your business model. And they will rail and flail against any innovation that threatens that status quo.

And just because large enterprises say they are innovative does not mean that they are. Take Microsoft as a case in point. Microsoft executives use the "i" word in every other sentence as if saying it often enough will make it true.

Let's get back to the business and culture of innovation--this is a startup world here in Silicon Valley. If you are a startup you have big dreams and you have dreams of disrupting the world--so let's not try to reduce the power of the term innovation. It is the life blood of our world.

But hey, the big enterprises can claim to be innovative--it really doesn't matter because the new "dotcoms" will eat their lunch--this time around :-)