The language and discourse that floats about so much of safety is little more than marketing and propaganda. The noise of all these competing interests, selling the next fad, is deafening. Is it really that easy to sell and con in this industry? Perhaps so, as there is simply no curriculum for critical thinking in safety and so much culture of compliance.

When the global mantra for safety is stasis (zero) and looking internally for something ‘new’. How can Safety be innovative?

I often read about safety fads, attempted ‘new’ approaches, ‘revolutionary’ innovation approaches (https://safetyculture.com/topics/safety-innovation), ‘innovation technologies (https://www.ehsinsight.com/blog/safety-innovations-in-high-risk-industries) and the list goes on. But if you read into any of this stuff and apply any level of ‘critical thinking’ (https://safetyrisk.net/critical-thinking-a-checklist-for-safety/), it’s mostly marketing for traditional safety.

After the seminars end, the think tanks stop, seminars cease and workshops end, its back to traditional safety: performance, metrics, systems and more marketing. How can safety experiment with alternatives when experimentation is high risk? How can Safety innovate from a foundation of compliance, standards and closed systems?

A sure giveaway when reading this non-innovation stuff is: a focus on ‘performance’, metrics, insular grouping within ‘safety’, mono-disciplinarity, selling products and ‘opportunities’, seeking sponsorship, selling a ‘buzz’, ‘vibe’ and entertainment, recycling the same old people, academics and ‘thought leaders’ and, glossy graphics.

The real question is, can innovation come from within safety? When all is comfortable in the bubble of compliance, can Safety innovate? When any negativity and critique is feared, how can innovation ‘come in’ from outside the comfort zone? How can disciplines that speak a different discourse get a ‘look in’ when the discourse is closed?

When one looks at the history of innovation, innovators and creativity, it usually comes from outside the camp. Afterall, this is the purpose of organising, to shut out disruption, keep the club secure and have it all mapped out before it starts. Such is the politics of conformance.

It was Weick (The Social Psychology of Organising, 1979, p. 3) who defined organising as:

‘Consensually validated grammar for reducing equivocality by means of sensible interlocking behaviours’.

And Weick was right. We all feel much safer in closed than open systems. We don’t invite in critical thinking that might disrupt what we know. After all, we know what we know and innovation is all about what we don’t know, similarly learning. Learning is about an invitation to what is NOT known. And can safety take that risk?

The dynamic of organising is to resist dissent, we see this in all the safety associations and the so called ‘body of knowledge’. We see it in the ethics of safety in deontology, the love of ‘duty’ and the power of conformance. I find it laughable when safety engineers teach ethics and the humanities, with no expertise in either. This is the culture of safety, characterised by fear of what’s outside.

When Safety brands alternative views ‘toxic’ and ‘negative’, we know there will be no invitation for disruption, no innovation and a return back to ‘performance’ rebranded as ‘new’.

 It’s most important in Safety to be comfortable, safe and secure.

Last night I saw a wonderful episode of Australian Story (https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-11-03/it-s-my-party-kirsha-kaechele/105966696) the story of Kirsha Kaechele (artist and curator at MONA – https://mona.net.au/). Kirsha, is a radical artist in her own right, just as MONA is a disruption to Art in doing Art. It is often from within the Arts, humanities and music that real disruption enters. This is where we find the real dynamics of Poetics.

Poetics is about all that is creative and innovative, evident in language and discourse (https://safetyrisk.net/podcast-audio-series-on-poetics-and-risk-14-episodes/).

Poetics is risky (https://safetyrisk.net/understanding-poetics-and-risk/) because it questions all text (in language, symbol and person). Poetics steps outside boundaries and asks why?

Poetics is not just about poetry but all forms of creation, innovation and learning (https://safetyrisk.net/poetics-and-risk-part-ii-why-is-poetics-important-to-risk-and-safety/). Poetics invites dissonance, disruption and dialectic because it knows these are essential for learning. You won’t hear anything about Poetics in the discourse on ‘safety innovation’ or ‘learning’.

One of the characteristics of Kirsha Kaechele was her Courage To Be Disliked (https://dn720006.ca.archive.org/0/items/the-courage-to-be-disliked_202210/The%20Courage%20To%20Be%20Disliked.pdf).

We see the opposite in Safety where the most important attribute to sell something is through being liked (https://safetyrisk.net/should-safety-people-be-liked/).

One of the key attributes to any con is selling ‘likeness’ (https://safetyrisk.net/theres-no-other-place-like-safety-for-a-good-con/). So, when new Safety comes ‘together’, it’s the same old faces, the same old group with the same old outcomes: performance, metrics and systems.

Just apply any critical questions (https://safetyrisk.net/critical-thinking-a-checklist-for-safety/ ) to what is marketed in safety and most often, its traditional safety – talking about all the same old safety stuff, wishing for something new, couched in anxiety and fear about curiosity, innovation and difference (even though claiming to be ‘different’). Look behind and underneath the ‘brand’ and there’s nothing new.

So, if you really are seeking innovation, the place to start is in Transdisciplinarity, in stepping outside Safety (https://safetyrisk.net/a-model-for-transdisciplinarity-in-risk/) and embracing risk.