The term innovation means a new way of doing something. It may refer to incremental, radical, and revolutionary changes in thinking, products, processes, or organisations. A distinction is typically made between Invention, an idea made manifest, and innovation, ideas applied successfully (Mckeown, 2008). In many fields, something new must be substantially different to be innovative, not an insignificant change, e.g., in the arts, economics, business and government policy. In economics the change must increase value, customer value, or producer value. The goal of innovation is positive change, to make someone or something better. Innovation leading to increased productivity is the fundamental source of increasing wealth in an economy.
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The term innovation means a new way of doing something. It may refer to incremental, radical, and revolutionary changes in thinking, products, processes, or organisations. A distinction is typically made between Invention, an idea made manifest, and innovation, ideas applied successfully (Mckeown, 2008). In many fields, something new must be substantially different to be innovative, not an insignificant change, e.g., in the arts, economics, business and government policy. In economics the change must increase value, customer value, or producer value. The goal of innovation is positive change, to make someone or something better. Innovation leading to increased productivity is the fundamental source of increasing wealth in an economy.
Innovation is an important topic in the study of economics, business, technology, sociology, and engineering. Colloquially, the word "innovation" is often used as synonymous with the output of the process. Since innovation is also considered a major driver of the economy, the factors that lead to innovation are also considered to be critical to policy makers.
Those who are directly responsible for application of the innovation are often called pioneers in their field, whether they are individuals or organisations.
Introduction
In the organizational context, innovation may be linked to performance and growth through improvements in efficiency, productivity, quality, competitive positioning, market share, etc. All organizations can innovate, including for example hospitals, universities, and local governments.
While innovation typically adds value, innovation may also have a negative or destructive effect as new developments clear away or change old organizational forms and practices. Organizations that do not innovate effectively may be destroyed by those that do. Hence innovation typically involves risk. A key challenge in innovation is maintaining a balance between process and product innovations where process innovations tend to involve a business model which may develop shareholder satisfaction through improved efficiencies while product innovations develop customer support however at the risk of costly R&D that can erode shareholder return.
Conceptualizing innovation
Innovation has been studied in a variety of contexts, including in relation to technology, commerce, social systems, economic development, and policy construction. There are, therefore, naturally a wide range of approaches to conceptualizing innovation in the scholarly literature. See, e.g., Fagerberg et al. (2004).
Fortunately, however, a consistent theme may be identified: innovation is typically understood as the successful introduction of something new and useful, for example introducing new methods, techniques, or practices or new or altered products and services.
POV: date=May 2008
