Background
While this sub-blog is focused on innovation in supply chain, just as important a topic is companies that fake innovation. In general, and by a great margin, companies fake innovation much more than they are truly innovative. I have discussed on many occasions that consulting companies are some of the largest promoters of fake innovation. It’s always interesting to come across someone or a source who has come to the same conclusion but from a different area. Below is a quote from Wikipedia on the topic of Six Sigma consultants.
Noted quality expert Joseph M. Juran has described Six Sigma as “a basic version of quality improvement”, stating that “there is nothing new there. It includes what we used to call facilitators. They’ve adopted more flamboyant terms, like belts with different colors. I think that concept has merit to set apart, to create specialists who can be very helpful. Again, that’s not a new idea. The American Society for Quality long ago established certificates, such as for reliability engineers.”
The use of “Black Belts” as itinerant change agents has (controversially) fostered an industry of training and certification. Critics argue there is overselling of Six Sigma by too great a number of consulting firms, many of which claim expertise in Six Sigma when they only have a rudimentary understanding of the tools and techniques involved. – Wikipedia
Its Purposes
Fake innovation has many purposes. It is used to justify excessive profits. For instance, much of the profits in pharmaceutical and oil companies are based upon extracting resources from the public domain. This is done by the pharmaceutical industry by taking university drug research, then just performing the final step (clinical trials) prior to commercialization. In the oil industry, it is most often the case that oil companies pay very little for the natural resource that is typically owned by a state. False innovation is critical for both of these industries to prevent calls for more equitable distribution of the proceeds to those that initially owned the intellectual property or the resource. The pharmaceutical and oil companies both invest enormous resources into PR and marketing to convince the general public that they are adding enormous value through innovation. There is an army of people who will create fake information to support these false concepts.
False Innovation In White Papers
One place where false or trumped-up innovation appears in great supply is in white papers. White papers are seen as a way to bring in business. I am sometimes contacted by companies that may be interested in engaging me in a writing contract. I am invariably contacted by the marketing departments in these companies. However, they are lead to me because I have a well-known blog, and they are interested in authoritative content. At this point though, a problem surfaces. I write information that I perceive as true. (My desire to publish true information greatly restricts by appeal to any company as a writer.) This is very different writing from writing with an intended purpose to sell a product or a service. They have a lot of euphemisms for it like “getting the word out,” “educating people,” etc. However, when it comes down to it, it’s about beginning a paper with an intended outcome that will increase the demand for a product or service, or as I call it “writing for cash.” Writing for cash is actually much more common than generally understood. For instance, two economists, Milton Friedman and Niall Fergueson became very prominent in their field because they wrote exactly what monied interests wanted them to write. They are both academics, but not entirely. While they work in academics, most of their money comes from private contributions from the same interests that they write to support. Most people who read Milton Friedman or Niall Fergueson think that their conclusions are objectively determined and do not realize the massive financial benefits that come from writing the false information which pleases the right people, and this is always the people who are willing to pay. Let us compare this to the definition of scholarship.
Scholarly method or scholarship is the body of principles and practices used by scholars to make their claims about the world as valid and trustworthy as possible, and to make them known to the scholarly public. – Wikipedia
Academics like Friedman and Fergueson are dangerous because their professorships give them the authority of objectivity, subject matter expertise and credentials of scholarship. This is why they are so sought after by corrupt interests. However, they are not scholars, they are on the take so to speak, selling their views and adjusting them for the highest bidder. If universities were serious about their reputation and serious about corruption they would put a stop to this, but as universities are increasingly reliant on private funds (and Friedman and Fergueson both, not coincidentally worked for elite private universities), so the objectivity and academic freedom of academics in the future will continue to decline. This problem is so severe and the ability of companies to confuse the public on what academics have actually come to consensus on in different areas that the percentage of people who think global warming is a problem has actually declined significantly in the past few years.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/oct/22/climate-change-us-pew-survey
http://people-press.org/2009/10/22/fewer-americans-see-solid-evidence-of-global-warming/
The website SweetSurprise.com is an industry site that is filled with medical misinformation. They have a video on the site where a medical doctor and with a university professorship proposes that medicine is unaware of any link between simple sugars and diabetes. This is an interesting “contrarian” view that is opposed by all of the scholarly work in this area. This professor’s opinion may have been influenced by his payment to appear in the video.
http://www.sweetsurprise.com/myths-and-facts/top-hfcs-myths
The movie Inside Job, clearly showed how many professors from the elite business and economic departments in the country are in effect on the payroll of the large financial institutions. One of the most prominent economists in the country (Martin Feldstein) sat on the board of AIG and has “no regrets” of his involvement with AIG as he was apparently unable to realize simple fraud when he saw it (Bringing up the point that AIG was engaging in fraud for writing unregulated and unbonded insurance would have resulted in Martin being removed from the board and replaced with another person of prominence). This is why it is not at all difficult to find quite prominent academics who oppose regulation, and why the enormous financial fraud that has come to light the past several years is guaranteed to be repeated.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZm7M1vn15w
Glenn Hubbard sees no problem being on industry payroll while being an academic. He would be a good person to write a white paper. For the right price he will write what ever Booz Allen or Accenture would like him to write.
Writing for Cash
White papers are an enormous source of false information on the internet. Over the past several years I have written about the following papers from the following major institutions. I was motivated to do so by my shock at the false information that they contained.
Booz Allen Hamilton paper
http://www.scmfocus.com/inventoryoptimizationmultiechelon/2010/10/booz-allen-hamilton-misrepresents-inventory-optimization-in-white-papers/
Accenture Paper
http://www.scmfocus.com/servicepartsplanning/2009/07/09/accenture-writes-a-horrible-paper-on-service-management/
Infosys
http://www.scmfocus.com/sapplanning/2011/09/20/the-low-quality-level-of-infosys-sap-technical-papers/
All of these papers were most likely written at the direction of a partner/director, and were part of initiatives within the companies to gain business. The Booz Allen paper is actually completely incorrect and none of the authors understood the subject matter. (It is still amazing to me to this day that a group of partners at Booz Allen thought they could write a white paper on a complex technical topic like inventory optimization, without anyone involved in the project actually understanding inventory optimization.)
The Accenture paper is child-like and adds nothing to the topic which it covers and is also, incidentally poorly written. Infosys papers are consistently poorly written, and actually written by people for whom English is a second language, unedited, and not useful as technical documents they pretend to be. One interesting point I have noted is that many white papers that contain false or misleading information are also poorly written.
My Hypothesis As to Why These White Papers are So Bad
All white papers of this type have something in common. All written “on command,” that is a partner/director told a subordinate to write the paper. The paper did not come from inside of the writer, which always shows in the end result. The subordinates who write these papers don’t actually believe what they are writing, but are performing the writing to obtain a good review from their partner.
The papers are completely disorganized and in very strange ways. This is the textbook output of politically charged committee writing. Most often white papers have several people controlling the reins. Several partners set the conclusion, but do no writing. They merely correct the various drafts and pronounce how unhappy they are with each successive draft. There is a well-known concept with in consulting companies that when on subordinate is working for two or more partners that the partners, in an effort to display their dominance towards one another, each take turns reprimanding the subordinate.
Next marketing has to ensure the paper is consistent with the overall corporate message. There many be different groups that become involved at different points as well, such as industry specialists to offer their input. During all of this the phrases “the message we want to send,” “the packaging,” “how we go to market,” will be used. However, one sentence that will probably never be used is “Is this actually true?” The beaten down author (a subordinate within the company who is not a writer) just wants the process to be over as soon as possible.
The Problem with Partners and Salespeople Controlling the Development of White Paper
I have worked with a number of partners and salespeople and I can say with confidence that they are the last people who should be leading an initiative to create “collateral.” Partners are essentially glorified salespeople, and all salespeople lack the interest in objectivity to create even reasonably accurate collateral. I have never once met a partner or a salesperson who had any interest in what was true. Critical thinking and curiosity are not their strong points. They are motivated by status, money and dominance. These characteristics do not lend themselves to objectivity.
The Benefit of White Papers
While it may seem like a nice idea to “get business,” it’s typically not worth it, because publishing white papers will either be at such a high level that they lack meaning, or they will be demonstrably false, as in these papers that I have listed above. Having junior resources, who happen to be on the beach and have not write your paper for you, as is most often the case will not result in a good quality paper. Most of the companies that write them are not capable of innovation, and are filled with highly motivated status driven conformist robots who spend a lot of time perusing BMW advertizements and thinking of ways to pay for house upgrades.
My recommendation is that if one cannot write and cannot think objectively and wants to work in 100% marketing mode, it’s better to stick to the conference circuit. Conferences do not impose any type of standard for accuracy on the information presented. The conference circuit is a better environment to get business than trying to write a paper that will eventually become an embarrassment to your brand.
Conclusion
Fake innovation is a mini-sub industry. It is made up of public relations, writing false and misleading white papers, advertising, etc.. Writing false information for cash is a serious problem that dilutes the quality of information that is available. Writing false information is not only restricted to marketing departments that put out white papers, but is a serious problem in academics (with some departments more affected than others). Contrary to popular belief, it’s very easy to corrupt academics into both writing and supporting propaganda. This has been demonstrated amply by both Milton Friedman and Niall Fergueson, along with countless other prominent academics. Many prominent academics in business fields use their academic appointments as a gateway to bigger financial opportunities in “consulting” for industry. In this way, they have fallen away from science and are simply for hire mouthpieces but with credentials.
Most white papers I read are brazenly commercial in orientation. The clear man objective of the white paper is to get business, and the entire flow of the these white papers is designed towards that end. The are essentially 8 to 12 page advertisements masquerading as informational documents. There is a call to action to contact the experts listed at the bottom of the document. Because of this, none of the information in a commercially driven white paper is reliable, as people tend to say the moon is made of green cheese if there is money to be made. However, the traditional view that white papers always help increase the profile of a company is debatable. Booze Allen Hamilton, Accenture and Infosys have humiliated themselves with very poor and white papers filled with false and misleading information in my area. Because white papers can be downloaded and “stay out there,” they are not a good vehicle if the main intent is to disseminate false information in order to get business. This is why I recommend the conference circuit where pretty much anything can be said, and a long-term record of what was said is not as easy to go back and check. The issue of permanence with official documentation is a serious problem for those engaging in make believe. For instance, in the move Inside Job, an academic was paid $124,000 by an investment company to write a paper titled “Financial Stability in Iceland,” prior to the Icelandic bubble crashing. However, on his resume, the paper is titled “Financial Instability in Iceland.” False white papers have this disadvantage that they have to be retitled in this way years after the fact in order to retain one’s credibility.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5msVl3oZl4U
