I’ve been hugely impressed with Umair Haque since coming across his Users Guide to the 21st Century and his recent blog post on Unnovation resonates, with its assertion that “strategy can only be described as an innovation if it results in (or is the result of) authentic, durable economic gains.”

I invested nearly 4 months at the start of this year into bootstrapping a productivity startup. Business plan drafted, prototype made and one RTFM crash course in Objective-C later, I binned it. The sliver of value the service would have provided simply wasn’t durable. A decision validated by the unveiling of Google Wave this week: the productivity market is far too fast for an individual to compete in.

When that penny dropped, I realised I had to stop trying to find an opportunitiy where I could crowbar in a revenue stream and focus, instead, on creating value by making something truly useful. I’ve since thrown my energy into creating a service that provides public API access to user generated trust networks. (A topic I’ll be writing more about very soon).

I suspect Haque’s unnovation post resonated so strongly with me because it mirrors my personal journey, attacking innovation that “fails to create authentic, meaningful value”. It led me to ponder what value can be created in the social media space and whether a lack of value creation was behind the elusivity of social media revenue? Which is when I realised that Social media doesn’t create value. It unlocks it.

Innovation in infrastructure (the Internet and mobile networks) creates new possible worlds of socio-economic interation. Social media then actualises the latent possibility. The value comes, fundamentally, from the innate capacity of the people using it.

It’s the value of institutions. Bringing the best (or just better) out of us.