The Great Confusion: Innovation vs Progress

We have mixed up the cards. Progress, on the other hand, was looking toward the future - a promise made to the future, the belief that tomorrow would be better than yesterday. Innovation is something else: it’s about finding new solutions to sustain the present, for better or worse. When a company "innovates" to maintain its dominant position by crushing its competitors more effectively, it innovates without progressing. It perpetuates a model; it does not transcend it. This confusion costs us dearly: we innovate without thinking about the direction, we create without questioning the impact. The result? Brilliant solutions for problems that no one asked to solve, algorithms that optimize the existing without ever challenging it. Innovation without a vision of progress is blind engineering. And blind engineering does not build a better world; it reproduces yesterday's world with today's tools.

AI or the Art of Perpetuating Our Biases

Artificial intelligence perfectly illustrates this drift. We are sold AI as the ultimate revolution, but let’s look at reality: most AI applications only perpetuate the existing faster and more aggressively. Recruitment algorithms that reproduce our discriminations, recommendation systems that trap us in our bubbles, chatbots that automate human relationships... It’s pure innovation: we find new ways to do the same thing. But where is the progress? Where is this promise of a better future? AI could revolutionize education, health, justice. Instead, it optimizes targeted advertising and automates call centers. We innovate in technique; we regress in the human aspect. It’s exactly the opposite of what the world needs.

When Innovation Dehumanizes

Here is the paradox of 2026: the more we "innovate," the further we distance ourselves from humanity. Social platforms constantly innovate to grab our attention - and destroy our ability to concentrate. Delivery services innovate to get our packages to us in 10 minutes - and exploit their delivery people. Technological innovation races ahead, while social innovation crawls. We create smoother interfaces but more fragile relationships, more powerful algorithms but weaker democracies, more connected cities but more isolated citizens. This kind of innovation retains only the worst aspects of our time: immediacy, superficiality, individualism. It perpetuates a wobbly present instead of building a desirable future. It is reactionary innovation disguised as technological revolution.

Rediscovering Meaning: Innovate for Whom, for What

It’s time to put innovation in its place: in service of progress, not in place of it. This begins with asking the right questions. Not "how can we do this differently?" but "should we continue doing this?" Not "how can we optimize this process?" but "does this process still make sense?" True innovation, the kind that deserves its name, starts from a vision of the future to invent the means to get there. It doesn’t seek to perpetuate the present but to transform it. It doesn’t innovate out of competitive obligation but out of human conviction. This kind of innovation takes courage: the courage to question what works, to sacrifice immediate efficiency for long-term impact, to choose the human over the metric.

Optimism as a Compass

In the face of this dehumanized innovation, optimism is not naivety but necessity. Believing that we can do better is the fuel of all true innovation. This optimism does not deny problems; it refuses fatalism. It doesn’t say that technology will solve everything; it says that we can guide technology towards what matters. That’s an essential difference.

The Innovation We Need

In 2026, truly innovating means having the courage to slow down when everything pushes us to speed up. It’s choosing to build tools that enhance our humanity rather than replace it. It’s prioritizing impact over speed, meaning over performance, the collective over the individual.

This kind of innovation already exists: companies that refuse infinite growth, technologists who create liberating rather than addictive tools, collectives that invent new ways of living together. But it remains marginal, crushed by the media noise of unicorns and disruptions.

The real challenge of 2026 is not to innovate faster. It’s to innovate better. To reconnect the link between innovation and progress. To place humanity - what it is and what it wants to become - at the heart of every decision.

Because in the end, innovating without a vision of the future is just perpetuating the past with new tools. And we already know how to do that.