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What is Innovation?

Here are some common definitions:

  • the introduction of something new
  • the first attempt to put an invention into practice
  • the successful exploitation of new ideas
  • using a tool in a new way
  • change the creates a new definition of performance

Types of innovation:

  • incremental innovation, where something current is adapted or modified, typically does not involve sweeping changes
  • radical innovation, involves completely new ideas, and often disrupts regular patterns

Characteristics, Concepts and Processes:

  • innovators are unaffected by the idea of failure -- failures provide learning and reuse opportunities
  • innovation is multidisciplinary, with ideas occurring at the intersection of disciplines
  • third-party experimentation with innovations often expands their application
  • useful innovation is robust, flexible and adaptable
  • innovations often arise from hidden needs
  • innovators like to make products that are immediately useful to their first users
  • innovations diffuse in a linear predictable pattern, sustaining innovation requires additional nonlinear processes that constantly recreate
  • creativity may be an individual process but innovation must occur in the organizational context

A specific definition for innovation exists for Pacific.