In Search of Newness

Abstract

In the past decades, it has been hard to ignore that a key characteristic of business is an unmistakable preoccupation, perhaps even obsession, with newness. In all corners of business, newness -along with its many allied notions such as creativity, innovation, and entrepreneurship, all of which are centered around newness in one way or another -is considered to be absolutely critical for survival. "Create/Innovate or die. This is the takenfor-granted 'truth' in the social, political and economic context in which we currently live," as Emma L. Jeanes (2006:127) emphasized almost 20 years ago. While certain business activities are not, of course, supposed to be all that creative (after all, most business organizations do not aim for creative accounting, for instance), the message and the rhetoric have been very clear for decades now. A much-quoted statement, for instance, came from Gary Hamel who, back in 1999 under the headline "Bringing Silicon Valley Inside," made the significance of innovation and entrepreneurship evident to all readers of the Harvard Business Review:Face it: out there in some garage, an entrepreneur is forging a bullet with your company's name on it. Once the bullet leaves the barrel, you won't be able to dodge it. You've got one option: you have to shoot first. You have to out-innovate the innovators, outentrepreneur the entrepreneurs (1999:72).