Is "best practice" best, or is innovation better?

Best Practice vs. Innovation

What is best practice?

Best practice means just what it says. Although assumptions (and hype) often come attached with that phrase. Best practice may be referred to within the context of a given industry, technology, business process, or just about anything. Best practice is considered to be the "best" way to do something.

There are many organisations that encourage the quest for best practice in various fields of expertise, some of which offer qualifications and certification. There are models of best practice, best practice guidelines and tools, and methods of benchmarking to compare your practices against the best.
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Best practice??

However, care needs to be taken with the use of the word "best". Over the course of this forum you may begin to realise that there are many ways of measuring things, and many perspectives to consider. What is best from one perspective may not be best from another. Best for who? Best for what? (Do you remember what they say about statistics?)

Best practice may not be best practice at all. For example, in the UK, "best practice" may be the best practice in the UK but not in the world.
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No one really knows what everyone is up to - do they? So we probably do not really know what best practice is today.

Best practice within any context is just best practice at that point in time. For some aspects the rate of change may be relatively slow, for others it is much faster.
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What is innovation?

Hypothesis: Things can always be improved.
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Concise definition: Innovation:

Introducing something new or making a change.

Notice that innovation does not necessarily mean a change for the better - that is an assumption. However, when carefully considered and implemented successfully, innovation can bring about change for the better. (Yes, the above critical appraisal can be applied to the word "better", just as it can to the word best.)

It is probably reasonable to say that successful innovation introduces new improvements.