THE INNOVATION WALK • HISTORY OF AN IDEA
“Innovation” spent four centuries as a warning before it became a compliment. The story of how it got from one to the other is the story of how societies learn to welcome new ideas.
Here is a word you probably think you understand: innovation. It shows up in corporate mission statements, on university buildings, in economic development plans. It sounds clean, forward-thinking, uncontroversial. A word that means progress.
But for most of its history (roughly four hundred years) the word meant something very different. Calling someone an “innovator” was not a compliment. It was a caution. It meant you were introducing changes where none had been invited, unsettling traditions that people relied on. The word carried weight, and not the kind anyone wanted to carry.
When the Innovation Walk chose its name, it chose a word with a past. That past is worth noting because it tells us something real about how societies decide what counts as progress, who gets to propose change, and how long it takes for a new idea to stop feeling unsettling and start feeling like an invitation.
A Word with a Past
The story begins in ancient Greece. Writers like Aristophanes used the term kainotomia — literally, “making a new cut in the terrain.” It referred to introducing something novel into the political or cultural landscape. Philosophers like Plato were wary of it. Novelty, in the Greek philosophical tradition, was often seen as a challenge to the stability of the community. The well-ordered society, in this view, was one that held its forms steady.
That wariness traveled forward through centuries.
The Latin verb innovare — “to renew” or “to change” — gave English the noun innovacion around the mid-1400s. At first it carried a relatively neutral sense: renewal, restoration. But by the 1500s and 1600s, the word had taken on a very different tone. To “innovate” was to introduce unwelcome changes to established religious or political traditions. It was not praise. It was closer to an accusation.
“For most of its life, the word innovation did not describe progress. It described the disruption of things people held sacred.”
— Adapted from Benoît Godin, Innovation Contested (2015)
Although, disruptors are heralded as some of the most important leaders today, the consequences back then were real. In 1636, the English official Henry Burton was imprisoned after being labeled an “innovator” the charge was that he had introduced unwelcome changes to the church. The word carried institutional weight. Monarchs cautioned against innovation in public proclamations. Reformers were criticized for it. For hundreds of years, innovation was not something you aspired to. It was something you were expected to avoid.
The Timeline
5th Century BCE | Kainotomia
Greek writers coin the concept of “making a new cut” — introducing novelty into political or cultural life. Philosophers treat it with caution: continuity and stability are the ideals.
Ancient Rome | Innovare
The Latin verb meaning “to renew” or “to change” enters the language. It will take another millennium to reach English.
- 1440s | Innovacion
The English noun appears, meaning renewal or restoration. For a brief window, the word is close to neutral.
1500s–1600s | A Word of Caution
Innovation takes on a negative tone — associated with unwelcome changes to religious or political traditions. Monarchs and institutions warn against it.
1636 | Henry Burton Imprisoned
The English official is labeled an “innovator” against the church and jailed. Being called an innovator carries real institutional consequences.
1700s–1800s | A Gradual Shift
The Enlightenment begins to soften the word, but it remains complicated in political circles. Innovation is tolerated — not yet welcomed.
1939 | Schumpeter Draws a New Line
Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter distinguishes invention (creating something new) from innovation (applying it successfully to a market or community). The word begins its transformation from a warning into an economic concept.
Late 20th Century | A New Vocabulary
Innovation becomes the defining word of technology, corporate strategy, and public investment. A word that once cautioned against change now celebrates it.
2023–Present | The Innovation Walk
Fort Myers embraces the word for a public redevelopment initiative along the Caloosahatchee — one that defines innovation not as a product launch, but as the full continuum of human ingenuity, from early engineers of this estuary to today’s community builders.
The Schumpeter Moment
The transformation crystallized in 1939. Joseph Schumpeter, an Austrian economist working at Harvard, did something deceptively simple: he drew a line between invention and innovation. Invention, he argued, is the act of creating something that did not exist before. Innovation is the act of taking that creation and making it matter — bringing it into a business model, a market, a community.
The distinction is more powerful than it sounds. Before Schumpeter, the word innovation was untethered; it described any kind of change, and change was suspect. After Schumpeter, innovation meant something specific: the process by which new ideas find their way into real life. It was no longer about unsettling the established order. It was about making the new idea useful.
That redefinition didn’t happen overnight. It took decades for Schumpeter’s framework to move through business schools, policy circles, and eventually the broader culture. But by the late twentieth century, the transformation was complete. Innovation had traveled from a word of caution to a word of aspiration.
Why This Matters to Fort Myers
Here’s the thing about a word with this kind of history: when you choose it, you’re choosing all of it. The Innovation Walk isn’t borrowing a corporate buzzword. It’s drawing on the full arc of what the word has meant — the caution, the slow shift, the eventual embrace — and using it to describe something the city is building together.
The Walk’s definition of innovation is closer to Schumpeter’s than to Silicon Valley’s: it’s not about product launches or novelty for its own sake. It’s about the long process by which human creativity meets a real place and changes it for the better. Thomas Edison’s decision to plant his winter laboratory on the banks of the Caloosahatchee, that was innovation. The community members who show up to a public meeting and offer their vision of what this riverfront could become, that is innovation, too.
The word’s journey reminds us that every widely accepted idea was once an unfamiliar one. Every innovation was, at some earlier moment, the thing people hadn’t yet decided to welcome. That’s not a call to be careless with change. It’s a reason to take the word seriously to understand that when Fort Myers names a public space after innovation, the city is making a commitment not just to new ideas, but to the slower, more patient, more human work of turning those ideas into something that belongs to everyone.