Honestly? I think that's what investors(and the trivial startups who court them) tell themselves as they tuck themselves in at night. Innovation, like a new t

Honestly? I think that's what investors(and the trivial startups who court them) tell themselves as they tuck themselves in at night. Innovation, like a new tree, has many branches which can be developed and on which to exploit and make money. Exploiting innovation is lucrative; research is costly. But now we've over-grazed. We got so greedy that we threw everything into harvesting the leaves, forgoing the costly part of sowing new seeds, and now we're navel-gazing and wondering what happened. It's not hard to understand. In WWII there was a ton of investment into important research and the results were overwhelming. Currently there is a ton of investment into photo-sharing social networks for dogs, and the results are, surprise!, quite underwhelming.