We overrate 'new' things in the wrong ways

After the death of Steve Jobs, I've lost count of the leaders/writers who praised his innovative nature. In the Indian context, while doing that, some also trashed the innovativeness of us Indians. If we define innovativeness to mean churning our new products/variants frequently, then yes one may not be innovative. But the way I understand innovation, is merely an improved way of doing things(improved by resource consumption/functionality) and not necessarily just design/art work. And what may be innovation for the early adopter, may not be so for Joe Citizen, whose needs are limited. For example. one may not need to throw out the old smart phone for the iphone4, if that does not give any more relevant functions for that user. Of course, being seen with that brand is a different psychological  push which I don't address

There is even a logical fallacy around this(http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/appeal-to-novelty.html), titled appeal to novelty, which is explained well below.

Appeal to Novelty is a fallacy that occurs when it is assumed that something is better or correct simply because it is new. This sort of "reasoning" has the following form:

1. X is new.
2. Therefore X is correct or better.

This sort of "reasoning" is fallacious because the novelty or newness of something does not automatically make it correct or better than something older.This sort of "reasoning" is appealing for many reasons. First, "western culture" includes a very powerful committment to the notion that new things must be better than old things. Second, the notion of progress (which seems to have come, in part, from the notion of evolution) implies that newer things will be superior to older things. Third, media advertising often sends the message that newer must be better. Because of these three factors (and others) people often accept that a new thing (idea, product, concept, etc.) must be better because it is new. Hence, Novelty is a somewhat common fallacy, escpecially in advertising.The age of thing does not, in general, have any bearing on its quality or correctness (in this context), except of course food quality etc.

In my view, in fields like economics, law and philosophy, old is gold for sure! After all, people read classics for a reason, and not just to give publishers money. They are rich of ideas and philosophy, and if anything is eternal, that is. Given that the focus today is on self managing teams and human beings(as opposed to technology only), the old lessons assume much more importance. Of course, we should not swing to the other extreme and accept 'time tested' things due to Appeal To Tradition. Blindly doing that would discount survivorship bias, institutionalized prejudice etc. For instance, anyone using Tintin comics to support racism  is committing this fallacy.