When did 'innovation' become insufficient?

Think about the history of innovation; ideas met the material world to make our lives better-- more efficiency, more effectiveness in our business life as well as our recreational lives. But today, our innovations don't point skyward, they point outward, and our new technological innovations help us diversify business more quickly, enabling social shifts. Just when did we stop looking upward towards a considerably better life and instead we look around at an innovation plateau of choices?

Of course, I am speaking broadly about the innovations focused on impacting the top-of-the-pyramid but it is important for us to know our history of innovation to determine some of these social impact metrics. This is spun off from the PR newswire article, Launch of Global Impact 50 Index Will Spur Increase in Investments with Social and Financial Return, and the Economist article, A Place in Society, from this weeks reading. There were some very critical comments about the overly complex financial innovations of our developed nations, my favorite being the opener from A Place in Society as Lord Turner said "...the financial industry had grown 'beyond its socially useful size'" An observation directly linked to the diminishing marginal returns from the growth of these industries. I believe too that the growth of certain sections of technological developments have a diminishing marginal return towards our innovation. Apple is struggling with this as we speak- years in development and almost no one is satisfied with the subtle differences from the iPhone 4s and the iPhone 5. Honestly, I don't need a fancy new iphone 5- I was quite pleased with my Nokia 2200 if it hadn't have fell in the pool I'd still have it. By that, I postulate that our innovation of diverse choices is not really bringing us the efficiency which the same innovation power and energy could bring to the bottom-of-the-pyramid.

But that is an entirely modern view on our plethora of phone choices. Back in the early years phone calls would take hours before you were even put through and cost an arm or a leg just to get service from the operator. This is a truly archaic experience which should not even be recreated by less developed countries-- that is where our differences in historical innovation, the historical rubber, don't meed the new roads of our current age. Back in the days of early telephones we required enormous amounts of infrastructure, demand and innovation on all dimensions of the adoption process. America's innovations on the ability to transform socially, adapt and adopt new technology is a cultural feat. In 1907 Maytag developed a quicker way to wash clothes and brought this to the market. These non-motorized washers started a hundred year old company of washing machines. Today we try to bring washing machines to the third world without electricity- similar to Maytag's old washing machines before electricity (short video attached). But the major difference is that the consumers of this product don't have the same relationship to the product and producer that early American's had. If we had a bicycle powered washer in early America- we were the top-of-the-pyramid. We were inspired by this innovation and companies competed to overcome each other. The social competition of that innovation brought the demand for a cycle of innovation. Today our Social Innovations follow a different model (Which is why we are talking so much about a different set of metrics) in which competitors don't do 'business battle' against their competitors but instead conduct 'cause battle' against immaterial goals of development. But the solution needs to be deeper and more material than a 'cause battle' and there needs to be demand from the consumers if we want to see innovation lead not only to adoption but to inspire communities to attempt to develop. If we can bring the tools and training for communities to develop their own innovations, I impose, that we will have a cycle of innovation. Now, this cycle might take fifty years to go from a crank washer to the machine washer just like it did for American's but that sort of innovation and those tools are how we originally made our lives better. We didn't have to define "social innovation" in those days because all of our innovations were made to improve people's lives. When did those products become so diverse that the only purchase value was the social signalling it brought? Our Apple fans want the newest gadget to show others and build social status, is this the definition of innovation for social signalling? Or was it in the 80's during the first Laser Disk tried to outplay the vinyl? Was it even earlier when automobiles forced horses and buggies off of the roads? When was the turning point that began a slow shift away from innovation for efficiency of time and effort?