Are You Hiding Behind Squishy Words? Stop. The words we use to describe the work we do should connote both promise and obligation.

Innovation is an amazing and important thing, but it's a tricky word. It's a squishy word. It's an uncommitted word—a word that can contain both results and the mere promise of results. It's a soft word. And soft words are becoming a big problem.

We're in love with soft words these days. Their softness makes them malleable. And malleable things can be stretched and squeezed and molded to contain whatever kind of effort we want. Consultant, project, approach, partnership, content. Those are all soft words.

There's an alternative to the softness of innovation, of course. And the alternative is not soft at all. The alternative is: invention.