RFID tag; you're not it. The aspiring "bar code of the future," midwifed at MIT's Auto-ID Center, faces a serious identity crisis. Proponents insist the tiny tracking tags (RFID stands for radio frequency identification) will profitably transform the global economics of supply chains and customer relationships. Outraged privacy activists attack the diminutive digital devices as Orwellian bugs for tomorrow's surveillance society. Though these rival claims are less about honesty than hyperbole, radio frequency ID is emerging as a symbol of innovation that benefits innovators at the direct expense of consumers. That's bad news for a technology bidding to be a ubiquitous global standard.

Even worse news was Wal-Mart's surprise summertime declaration that it would indefinitely delay a high-profile "smart shelves" RFID test with Gillette. When the world's largest-and most technologically invested-retailer postpones experimentation with a next-generation innovation, that's a market signal radio-tag innovators can't afford to ignore. If any company is superbly positioned to turn a technical protocol into a ubiquitous presence, it's Wal-Mart.

Mere weeks later, another Gillette smart-shelves experiment with Tesco, Great Britain's tech-savviest retailer, ended amid controversy. What's going on here? Are the anti-radio-tag activists winning the privacy propaganda wars? Does RFID technology promise more than it can reasonably deliver? Or do the darn tags simply cost too much?

The answer reveals a great deal about the dueling economics-and dueling ethics-of innovators with conflicting business models. Technology innovators must always remember that there's a huge difference between customers who invest in innovation to save money and those who invest to make money. The fervent belief that saving money and making money are somehow equivalent is the great innovation delusion.