Bad Business Jargon: The Continuing Saga

Yet more.

Above-captioned
This is a truly awful way to describe anything.

Substitute this or a concise description of the subject of your e-mail or letter and it will read oh, so much better.

Action item
Plain old task will do nicely, thank you.

And please don’t action anything; it’s not a verb.

Ecosystem
If something isn’t a space (the derivatives space, the cannabis space, the cryptocurrency space), it’s an ecosystem – or, indeed, its own ecosystem.

Meaning (I think), subject to its own set of rules, like those of a particular jurisdiction. So, not really an ecosystem. Rather, a régime, a scheme, a system, a jurisdiction.  

Value-add
This has three strikes against it.

First, it’s a horrible cliché.

Secundo, it’s one of those ugly and unnecessary nouns-from-verbs.

And finally, it’s a redundancy. Just say value or benefit. The ­–add bit is superfluous; and there isn’t such a thing as a value-subtract. Not yet, anyway…

–Neil Guthrie (@guthrieneil)