Gerald Ajam

Explore / Counterposition

“Innovation should be novel”

An innovation is new to its setting and better there. Novelty in the world is optional.

Status Position

Published September 2026

All counterpositions

The strongest formulation

Incremental change cannot solve problems created by the current system. Something genuinely new is sometimes the only way out, and an appetite for novelty keeps an organisation from settling.

Why it is attractive

Novelty is easy to announce and hard to criticise. Funders, leaders and press reward what has not been seen before.

Where it holds

It holds where existing options have been tried properly and the constraint is structural. There, a new form can open possibilities that refinement cannot.

Where it breaks

It breaks when newness becomes the criterion. Proven practices adapted carefully to a new setting often do more good, and chasing novelty discards the capability built on the last initiative before it pays out. Here the disagreement is partly about values: how much risk a system should take with other people’s children.

What evidence matters

Rogers’ diffusion of innovations defines an innovation as new to the adopter, and treats reinvention by adopters as normal. Cuban (1986) and Tyack and Cuban (1995) trace a century of classroom technologies promised as transformative and absorbed by existing practice. What matters is the gain over the next-best option in this setting, and whether it lasts.

More precisely

A more precise version

An innovation is a change that is new to its setting and works better there than the next-best option, whether or not it is new to the world.

Singapore