I recently read that the term ‘innovation’ is now passé. Everyone has been using it for long enough for the word to have lost its meaningfulness, or its descriptive power—that is, you would actually be perceived as quite uninventive, perhaps even dull or try-hard, to describe yourself (or something else) as innovative. In my reading about this word overuse problem, a commentator noted they now use ‘courage’ in place of ‘innovation’. And I imagine plenty of businesses are trying to come up with similar descriptors of themselves and their product/service, now ‘innovative’ has followed ‘cutting edge’ and ‘modern’ to the sad pile of overused language.

The trick is to find a replacement term that somewhat conveys the original idea yet takes on the priorities, concerns and ambience of the ‘now’, even of the possible future. A user of ‘courage’ is suggesting their operating environment or marketplace requires a brave stance, perhaps the ‘courage of conviction’. The word certainly implies there are hurdles to be overcome, battles to be fought. In that sense, it is an agenda setting word. And it is also a visionary word. An organisation that calls itself courageous is saying ‘we see challenges and we want to take them on’.

So, from relying on the habitual words that we all use without much thought, you can power up your vocabulary to say so much more about you and your organisation. Can you think of another way of saying ‘blue sky thinking’ (which replaced the awful ‘thinking outside the box’), ‘results driven’, outcomes oriented’, ‘customer centric’, ‘quality focused’, ‘transparency’ and ‘forward thinking’?

The key is to choose words that stand out because they are not commonly used in your writing context. But you also have to be sure your new words are relevant to that context: don’t be fancy just for the sake of it (no ‘soothfast’ for ‘truthful’). And don’t borrow too much terminology from other forums. Even if you love sport, for example, I’m not sure the world is ready for you to start talking about ‘game changers’, ‘play makers’ and ‘red cards’. But ‘certainty’, ‘clear thinking’, ‘questioning’, ‘frank discussions’, ‘adventurous’, ‘controlled’ and ‘exploring‘ may be great words for reaching out to readers.

I also like to move away from descriptive nouns and adjectives, and think about verbs instead (which I think are our best tool for connecting to readers). So, try to explain an idea as an action, with expressions such as:
‘To tackle this problem, we are working on x and y.’
‘The evaluation will compare how we market our product with how customers actually use our product.’
‘Our team understands you require x and y, and we will use ABC to show how well we provide those services.’

I wish you good luck in updating your business speak. Just remember to test words on a ‘courageous’ person before you launch them on the world.

Postscript: see the Word Spy website (in my Out and about links) for new words entering our language. I love some and hate others, but they may inspire you!