The arbitration community of institutions, practitioners, arbitrators and academics compete for attention with frequent announcements of ‘innovations’ and related claims of increased efficiency and other inchoate benefits. This article calls for a standardised definition of innovation and its application to proposals for change in the world of commercial arbitration, seeking an assessment based on outcomes and increased relevance for the ultimate commercial users that arbitration is meant to serve. Examples of recently announced innovations are reviewed from an empirical perspective, by comparing similar initiatives and then drawing the author’s personal conclusions on how well the exemplars meet the expectations set by their proponents and the objective standard proposed by the author.