It's a (fill in the blank) new world today in innovation. In the old, old days, you had technology companies named after the innovators who founded them. Hewlett-Packard. Watkins-Johnson. Varian Brothers.

Then startups chose names associated with their technology: Intel, Advanced Micro Devices, Linear Technology, Analog Devices.

Today innovators choose goofy but memorable names (Facebook, Twitter, Zynga, Groupon) and often, according to Dan McGinn of Harvard Business Review, they aren't even sticking with a given technology.

In a podcast interview previewing an upcoming article, McGinn notes that often today's startups prototype a technology or service and then quickly pivot to something else.

"It's the changeability aspect that makes these companies seem different," he says in an interview with Sarah Green.

The companies are "not built to last but built to be bought by Google," he adds.

Believe it

I couldn't agree more. Innovation itself and the success of a company are tied up in one word: belief. Technologists have to believe in their product and themselves in order for a company to even have a chance at breaking out and becoming successful.

Anything less is dilettante-ism, serving only the needs of the "inventor" and not the customer.

Do you agree or am I missing a major tipping point in the evolution of business?