Unless you’ve been living under a rock — or stranded somewhere in Zone 6 during a Tube strike — you’ll have heard that Uber’s license to operate in London has not been renewed, meaning that it could be the end of cheap, fast transport through the capital and beyond.

Sadiq Khan and TFL have been mildly hostile to Uber for a while in their public statements, while black cab drivers themselves have (understandably) been vocally angry about a company which flouts the very rules that stop them from competing. So it was easy for Uber to hit back with a semi-convincing statement that London was “closed to innovative companies” by bringing down the guillotine on their private-hire operation licence.

As the shadow of an uncertain Brexit looms closer, “closed to innovative companies” is obviously not a good look for a city which wants to stay at the cutting edge of progress — especially as Brexit is so readily interpreted by the international community as a backwards-looking gesture. But really, does Uber’s accusation that the UK is anti-progress have any basis in reality? Or is Uber attempting to use the UK’s political turmoil to rally up public support?

If it’s the latter then there’s no doubt the Silicon Valley disruptors will find a lot of people throwing their weight behind them, and not just because Uber is a convenient travel option. Many members of marginalized or at-risk groups have tweeted that Uber provides safety as well as comfort, and others have pointed out that the people who will suffer most from the ban include the drivers themselves, many of whom will have recently paid for their own vehicles only to find themselves suddenly unable to work.

So opinions may vary when it comes to the ban, but since we’re an innovation consultancy we obviously have a perspective to share on London’s future, and on that key little word in Uber’s statement that is getting overlooked — just what do Uber mean by “innovative?”

Innovation, after all, is not an abstraction, and it surely can’t mean systematic deregulation in service of creeping monopolization of public services. Less well-known ride-sharing apps already operate freely in London, so for all Uber’s bluster, London remains a truly free market for transport innovators. The point which Uber is — perhaps willfully — missing is that London isn’t hostile to cab-sharing app so much as it is hostile to Uber, and other companies who prefer to side-step all that boring bureaucracy .

And who can blame them? Uber is completely under-regulated, with a history of charging surge pricing during emergencies and disasters (this has since been clamped down on) and complaints of sexual abuse by drivers going unexamined (since Uber drivers are technically self-employed, Uber can publicly distance themselves when their drivers break the law.) This is allowed to continue purely because chronic under-regulation is not just a fairly predictable by-product of the sharing economy boom, but an actively necessary ingredient in it. A similar lack of rigor and accountability dogs YouTube (who claim to have “no idea” why their algorithms automatically ban some LGBT+ content) Twitter (who are routinely accused of taking the most minimal action against trolls and even Neo-Nazis who use the service for hate-speech) and Facebook (whose role as a media platform has been questioned for allowing Fake News and click-farming to literally influence Presidential elections.) All these companies exploded in part because they didn’t have the usual red tape tying them down, and that’s why they’ve all found themselves in positions of enormous power and influence while still very publicly making everything up as they go along.

But while Uber is not alone in under-regulation, its model looks uniquely unsustainable. Uber’s cheap fares are subsidized by venture capital provided by firms who presumably hope to profit from revolutionizing urban transportation and subsequent monopolization. Uber is allowed to run at a loss every year — it has literally never made a profit (and its customers only pay 41% of their journey, which is why Gett and other conventionally-regulated private hire competitors are so much more expensive.)

All of this leads us to a few pertinent questions. What is innovation, and what separates it from fashions, fads, and gold-rushes? If innovation cannot integrate with the status quo in a way that translates into meaningful change, does it still count as progress? Does Uber’s grand vision of the future count as innovation if the lightest touches of regulation strangle it out of existence?

In our frank opinion: absolutely not. Innovation involves finding revolutionary ideas, sure — but it also involves refining and developing them so that they can achieve some semblance of longevity. Uber are one of the most innovative companies in the world from that perspective, but it can’t exist in a vacuum — the hard part, as we’ve always recognized in our own work as a consultancy, is implementing a firebrand idea back into business as usual. Having an idea — even a brilliant one that you are able to rapidly convert into a billion-dollar unicorn — is only part of the process.

What that means for Uber is that it’s simply not good enough to disregard workplace regulations (for what it’s worth, a safe and happy workforce was an innovation in its time) just because they don’t suit the way you prefer to do business.

Any attempt to use “innovation” to dodge vital questions about your business suggests that you’re not dealing with real “innovation” — it’s either fealty to a market bubble with no future, or it’s cowboy corporatism. The painful pill for Uber to swallow is that they will now be forced to regulate themselves properly (this is a good thing for everyone, including Uber, in the long run) or be outpaced by a new breed of innovators who know how to make their innovations more useful and applicable. For Uber, the relationship between innovation and business and usual — and how the latter should exist to improve the former — seems to have been forgotten among a stampede of driverless cars.

The stage is set. If Uber can’t step up to the plate (which they almost definitely will) then another challenger will. The core offerings of companies like Hailo and MyTaxi may not be able to replace the hole that Uber leaves if they really are blasted out of the UK marketplace, but with a little craft and ingenuity there are hundreds of ways Uber’s disruptive approach can be refined and improved — or replaced, ready to be embraced by Sadiq Khan and TFL and millions of London-based customers.

It may not feel like it in the sultry, disruptive heat of a Silicon Valley business meeting, but innovation is a real thing, with real rules and real consequences for real people — it isn’t some abstract game.

But Uber are playing as if it is — and right now they sound like very sore losers.