- published: 23 Feb 2014
- views: 276281
Innovation is the creation of better or more effective products, processes, services, technologies, or ideas that are accepted by markets, governments, and society. Innovation differs from invention in that innovation refers to the use of a new idea or method, whereas invention refers more directly to the creation of the idea or method itself. Innovation differs from improvement in that innovation refers to the notion of doing something different (Lat. innovare: "to change") rather than doing the same thing better.
The word innovation derives from the Latin word innovatus, which is the noun form of innovare "to renew or change," stemming from in—"into" + novus—"new". Diffusion of innovation research was first started in 1903 by seminal researcher Gabriel Tarde, who first plotted the S-shaped diffusion curve. Tarde (1903) defined the innovation-decision process as a series of steps that includes:
Ever since the invention of innovation the number of definitions of innovation seems to grow even faster than the number of researchers and practitioners in innovation. What is more, the term innovation seems to refer to fundamentally different matters sometimes, which is the case if one colleague calls a new product an innovation while the other two consider an innovation either the process that leads to the new product or the products market diffusion.
[music by Thomas C. Hansen]
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