What is innovation?

The Process of Technological Innovation is defined by Robin Roy as a flow of events:
	problem definiton and idea;
	research and development;
	engineering;
	production;
	diffusion

The problem definiton may come from outside the department and may even be suggested by 
a source external to the company (e.g. client brief).

The rules of this process of Innovation are based on both myth and literature.

They say the process:
1)	is a response to a need or an opportunity and is context dependant
2)	needs creative effort and needs to be new
3)	causes a need for more change

Points 2) and 3) show it is an on-going process which reproduces itself in a new innovation 
sporned by the first. Here the vocab is getting organic in the biological sense and so we 
see how alive innovation can be and that it can be started and nurtured to make you money. 
Some of the creative effort required for 2) can be taken from 3).

Needs and Innovation:
A need is not necessarily fulfilled by innovation.
It may not be a new idea that solves the problem.

A need may not be obvious till the innovation fulfills it.
For example for most people it was only word-processing packages became widely available that 
they found they had a much faster way to create documents.

There is a need for a realistic view of innovation.


Two easy definitions of an innovation:
An innovation is the result of a process called Innovation.
An innovation is an invention carried through research (R&D and Marketing Research) to adoption 
in the market place or place of use.


To summarise:
So an innovation can be a two-headed toothbrush or the training of company reps. to use 
portable computers. The first being sold in the marketplace and the second in its repetition 
around the world.

Edward Symes