In a recent IBM commercial, the company implies that virtual worlds are a fad and, as a result, a waste of both time and money. For those who haven’t seen it, the commercial starts with an employee showing off his avatar to someone else, presumably a boss. The employee is all pumped about how he can conduct business in this virtual world and how he owns an island there. The boss asks if he can make money. The employee responds with something like, “Virtual money or real money?” This sets up the boss’s response that “The point of innovation is to make actual money.”

There are many reasons why this commercial is unintelligibly stupid. First, the point of innovation is actually not to make money; it is to improve quality of life. For some, this translates directly to making money, but not everyone is that shallow. Second, implying that innovation is only worthwhile if there’s a foreseeable profit in the future fails to recognize that many of the most successful businesses got there because they saw something that other businesses didn’t see. (Not to mention a significant number of scientific discoveries that were made with no clear profit motive in mind.) Third, this commercial, and really the whole series of commercials, implies that actions are unilaterally more important than words, but the reality is that there is extreme value in planning. Dwight D. Eisenhower once said, “In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.” This absolutely applies to business as well. Actions are important; this is why people talk about what to do before going out and simply doing something for the sake of acting.

Amazingly, this commercial seems to have actually resonated with someone. The author believes the commercial “plays right to the heart of the matter” and claims that businesses are making decisions based on technology that doesn’t really do anything. Unfortunately this seems to equate “the matter” to some fixed context in which businesses can act on new technologies without thinking about them and still make money. Technology is not a fixed context. (Other bloggers have at least left the relationship between doing and talking as something to consider.) More surprisingly, the author takes this twisted logic and then actually concludes with the right observation by saying “we need to ensure that we pick the [tools] that best fit our business versus playing the ‘me too’ game.” This is exactly correct, but the only way to do that is by thinking about what tools are right for your business; simply “doing” won’t cut it.

Of course, there are many stupid commercials on TV. Why focus on this one in particular? Because of the extreme irony in the fact that IBM has invested heavily in virtual worlds! (Seriously.) Yes, that’s right: They have been doing exactly the thing that they were advertising as something they could help your company avoid. Now, at some point your business might benefit from a technology like virtual worlds, but then, how would you know unless you take a break from all that “doing” to think?

Perhaps this commercial shouldn’t have bothered me as much as it did. IBM has a history in hypocritical commercials.