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 conceptualising innovation in the scholarly literature.

Fortunately, however, a consistent theme may be identified: innovation is typically understood as the introduction of something new and useful, for example introducing new methods, techniques, or practices or new or altered products and services.

It is useful, when conceptualizing innovation, to consider whether other words suffice. Recent authors point out that invention - the creation of new tools or the novel compilation of existing tools - is often confused with innovation. Many product and service enhancements may fall more rigorously under the term improvement. Change and creativity are also words that may often be substituted for innovation.

What, then, is innovation that makes it necessary to have a different word from these others, or is it a catch-all word, a loose synonym?

Much of the current business literature blurs the concept of innovation with value creation, value extraction and operational execution. In this view, an innovation is not an innovation until someone successfully implements and makes money on an idea. Extracting the essential concept of innovation from these other closely linked notions is no easy thing.

One emerging approach is to use these other notions as the constituent elements of innovation as an action: Innovation occurs when someone uses an invention - or uses existing tools in a new way - to change how the world works, how people organize themselves, and how they conduct their lives.

Note in this view inventions may be concepts, physical devices or any other set of things that facilitate an action. An innovation in this light occurs whether or not the act of innovating succeeds in generating value for its champions. Innovation is distinct from improvement in that it causes society to reorganize. It is distinct from problem solving and is perhaps more rigorously seen as new problem creation. And in this view, innovation applies whether the act generates positive or negative results.