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Jargon, at its best, provides industry insiders an elegant shorthand for communicating complex ideas that no one has time to explain again and again. As tech journalists, we have found much of the argot on this list quite useful.
But innovation, at its best, is about steadily re-examining assumptions and fix-its that have worked in the past. As any scientist can tell you, such patch-up terms have a tendency to wear through into meaninglessness with overuse.
Here are a few you may want to jettison from your vocabulary in 2015.
'Disrupt' or 'disruption'
'Disruption,' as business jargon, was coined in the seminal book The Innovator's Dilemma to warn big companies against the ways in which smaller competitors could 'hack' their business models. Increasingly, it refers not to a threat, but something small companies should strive for. Peter Thiel, a noted tech renegade and regular participant in Techcrunch Disrupt events, notes in his book Zero to One that the word no longer means what most of its fans think it means, if it ever did, and needs to be put on probation.
[ibimage==42563==Medium==none==self==ibimage_align-right]'Hack,' 'Hacker,' or 'Hacking'
Whether their hats or white, black, or grey, no one ever seemed to believe that 'hackers' had a common purpose. Perhaps this one deserves to go the way of 'cyberpunk.'
'Growth hacking' means something rather specific in business development and hardcore quant marketing circles, but is taking more than its fair share of abuse.
'Rockstar'
As one redditor said, “There's a coffee shop near me that's looking for rockstars.” Like gurus and ninjas, rockstars may be luminaries in the service industry, but there's no need to draw them out in job ads if you're a serious tech business.
[ibimage==42564==Medium==none==self==ibimage_align-left]'Revolutionary'
You get a pass on this one if your app has an active FBI file.
'Pivot'
It would be much more refreshing and helpful to say that your business has made some mistakes and is trying new things in response to what it has learned from them. Our series of self-searching CEO interviews attests that you don't need to cover yourself with this euphemism.
'Drinking the Kool Aid'
Context is powerful. If a famously mercurial CEO were exposing herself to a PR thunderstorm on Twitter, you wouldn't think it was cute to metaphorically exclaim, "Woah, she's really driving through Dallas in a convertible!"
'Drinking the Kool Aid' refers to a mass suicide that happened more recently and is profoundly offensive to the living souls who remain affected by it. If you insist, you can go back to using 'sellout' as an epithet for some in-vogue '90s nostalgia.
'Pipeline'
Try 'boneyard.' On most corporate organization charts, the pipeline is where good ideas go to decay. We all have wonderful ideas that we will never have time to act on. Consider passing them along to someone who has the wherewithal to make them realities. Unlike hard work, ideas are a replenishable resource - you will always be able to generate more.
'Startup'
There's no way for us to stop talking about startups – it's what we do. And there's plenty to admire in the guts and inspiration it takes to found and run a startup. But it needs ideas, grunt work, and an eager customer base to function. Don't bother calling your new concept a 'startup' – we'll handle that for you. Whom does it serve? What does it do?
