The Judy Estrin “Innovation” book plug / story is doing the rounds and popping up repeatedly on Techmeme, appearing on a 2 day interval approximately:

August 27th – Mike Masnick’s TechDirt –

Innovation Isn’t Dying In Silicon Valley; It’s Just Changing — Apparently Judy Estrin, a well-known Silicon Valley tech entrepreneur and exec, is coming out with a new book warning that the infrastructure needed for innovation in Silicon Valley is going away.

August 29th – then on to the NYT’s Bits Blog by Claire Cain Miller:

Does Silicon Valley Face an Innovation Crisis? — Judy Estrin, who has built several Silicon Valley companies and was the chief technology officer of Cisco Systems, says Silicon Valley is in trouble. In a new book, “Closing the Innovation Gap,” which will be in bookstores Tuesday …

Sept 1st (slightly longer period) it hits the NYT main paper – Claire is again the author….

Another Voice Warns of an Innovation Slowdown — MENLO PARK, Calif. — Judy Estrin, 53, has spent her entire career in Silicon Valley, a region that thrives on constant innovation. Ms. Estrin, the former chief technology officer of Cisco Systems, has founded four technology companies.

OK, OK I get the message – there is less Innovation in Silicon Valley than in the Good Old Days

The other interesting message though, is that a PR campaign looks lamer as the same aggregator (Techmeme in this case) picks it up each time its spikes, in rapid succession. Oscar Wilde said you can never be talked about too much, but I wonder if he was thinking about “story porpoising” like this……

Was it on porpoise, we wonder, or an interesting by product of digital news aggregation on linear media marketing? Is this the Olde PR failing to innovate, or a new innovation using the nature of aggregators?

Of course, we can now confidently predict we will see it again on the 3rd/4th September, what is less clear is the paper it’ll be in. We’re offering 3:2 on Wired and 4:3 on the WSJ .

My view – I by and large don’t buy it – I subscribe to the Marc Andreessen view that innovation is a numbers game (aka a Darwinian system) and as the numbers have never been greater, I suspect neither has the innovation. What may be true is that the old measures and metrics are still looking under their respective lamp-posts for illumination. (Measuring patents, not start-ups for example, or long term funded projects vs metaproject progress in a field)

(Note – article is written in widescreen TongueincheekOcolor)