With the holidays fresh behind us, a portion of the folks out there still wax nostalgic for a time when things were different – more integrity, less BS and a better quality of people and things that make up our lives. I am one of the presumably many who long for an improvement of all things that affect our well-being - including the products and services that I buy; and isn’t innovation meant to do just that?

It seems to me that for many recently, innovation has come to mean making things as cheap as possible. Now not only is this move more tactical than innovative, this short-term Panacea also leads to a game of  thinning margins with diminishing returns (think of the Fed’s key lending rate as a model) and ever increasing brand erosion. People used to recommend products because they were good, not because they are cheap. Like an acrimonious divorce, competing on price is a loser’s game where neither of the principal combatants wins; only the bystanders do.

So why don’t we think of innovation as making things better first and less expensive second; and by cheaper we should understand it to mean only less costly…not a reduction in quality, quantity, convenience or any other characteristic and measure associated with the beneficial value of the end-product.

This for sure will require a change in certain execution, but more significantly than that, it will take a change in the way we think about the value we produce. This must start at the senior-most level of an organization and permeate throughout the culture and across all stakeholders – the customer must feel it.

If we think of all the products and services that have changed our habits, they have one thing in common: a ubiquity that was created by its users. They are the “secret ingredient”, the grass roots and the loyal army of volunteer promoters of your brand for only one reason – because they believe in it.

Maybe it’s your time to give them something to believe in again.