Reading through Business Week's recent cover story on the Innovation Economy, I was pleased that "mundane advances" were given their due.

It is typical for features of this sort to merely focus on the next new thing, the killer app, the big breakthrough that will drive economic progress. In other words, we often told about the what -- whether it is occurring in biotech, energy or nanotech -- that is leading the "way to the future."

What typically gets short shrift in these pieces is the how of innovation. In fact, the most impressive gains in recent decades have probably come from innovations in process.

After all, we are in the midst of a productivity boom. Labor productivity doubled between the 1970s and the 1990s and has exceeded 4 percent since 2001.

Take IT as an example. As MIT's Eric Brynjolfsson has written: "The unsung heroes of the IT revolution have not been the microchip and the Web browser, but rather the creative, diligent, and painstaking work done by those who have been rethinking supply chains, customer service, incentive systems, product lines, and 1,001 other processes and practices affected by computers. Investments of intangible capital constitute the real source of today’s productivity growth."

While the greatest advances in process innovation have occurred in the back office and on the supply side of business to this point, expect the next wave to occur in the front office and on the demand side. Turning customer insight into action will be a central aspect of this trend. That's the way to the future that deserves more attention from business pubs and business people alike.