Exnovation is the opposite of innovation

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On December 20, 2024 I posted on A comic strip about flipping prefixes from ex- to in-. The opposite direction also works. There is an article by Hector P. Rodriguez et al. at The Milbank Quarterly in 2016 (Volume 94 number 3, pages 636 to 653) titled The Exnovation of Chronic Care Management Processes by Physician Organizations whose opening states:

 

“Exnovation is the process of removal of innovations that do not improve organizational performance, are too disruptive to routine operations, or do not fit well with the existing organizational strategy, incentives, structure, and/or culture. John Kimberly first coined the term in 1981 to describe the removal process at the tail end of the innovation cycle.”

 

Exnovation isn’t either the Merriam-Webster or Oxford English dictionaries. But there is a Wikipedia page on Exnovation, and a LinkedIn Pulse article by Joanne Hagerty on June 24, 2025 titled We Need to Talk About Exnovation.

 

There is a more detailed discussion in the 2023 book by Juergen Howaldt and Christoph Kaletka titled Encyclopedia of Social Innovation (Chapter 10 page 56) which you can read here at Google Books:

 

“Exnovation ‘occurs when an organization divests itself of an innovation in which it has previously invested’ (Kimberly 1981, p. 91). Kimberly offers the example of an organization, which adopted videotape equipment to record staff meetings. Subsequently, the organization no longer actively uses the equipment, its popularity fades away, but the equipment is still there, and costs the organization space and money. Exnovation, in Kimberly’s sense is the active divestment of the innovation) i.e., here the videotape equipment), not just discontinued use. He observes that there are several reasons for exnovating; another innovation replaces the old one, for example the organization might switch to Zoom recordings, or the innovation might turn out not to be justified (perhaps, it was just a bad idea to record the meetings in the first place). The underlying reasons for exnovating might be due to beliefs about the performance of different technologies, due to imitation of other organizations, or result from a change in policy support. In short, exnovation is a rich and complex topic. It is also a topic that is widely ignored due the prevailing pro-innovation bias in innovation studies (more on this below). In a few pages of his 1981 article, Kimberly introduces exnovation along with key considerations for further development.

 

Subsequent research extended the scope of the definition beyond organizations and technology. ‘Expanding on Kimberly’s definition, we understand exnovation as the purposive termination of existing (infra) structures, technologies, products, and practices’ Heyen et al. 2017, p. 326). In this wider sense, exnovation depends on actors across social spheres. The extended definition provides a fertile soil for social innovation research since the latter calls for a shift from a reductive focus on technological change in business contexts to one on change of practices across social spheres (Howaldt et al. 2014) (- SOCIAL INNOVATION AND SOCIAL CHANGE). In light of these developments, social exnovation can be defined as the deliberate termination of social practices, and the change in goals and relations as well as materials and techniques required for this.”