Another fortnight, another Bookmachine article: and this time it’s all about the Buzzword Trap. You could be trapped without realising it… As ever, read more over on the Bookmachine blog.
Last year, it was all about ‘disruption’, this year it’s all about ‘pivoting’. Buzzwords are a given part of any industry, but when do they start to do more harm than good?
Defining buzzwords
Buzzwords flag up concepts quickly and easily, alluding to an entire theory with just one word or phrase. Let’s take ‘disruption’ as an example. Each time somebody says ‘disruption’, they are referencing the act of innovating against the industry norm, implicitly in such a way as to scupper their competitors. It’s undeniably convenient to be able to sum all that up with one word.
But ‘disruption’ was old hat by mid-2014. Nowadays those in the know are ‘pivoting’ their businesses. Interestingly, when you analyse both of these ideas, they actually mean almost identical things. This not unusual, in fact it’s a critical part of a buzzword’s life-cycle… [READ MORE]