Shivani quizzed Professor Suresh, “Sir, can you tell us the difference between innovation and invention?” The learned professor smiled and replied that there was a significant difference between the two. He went on to add, that the meaning of “innovation” is culled out of its Latin root, nova, or new. It is generally understood as the introduction of a new thing or method. So innovation is placing a product or service in a new context to create value, while invention is creating something entirely new.
MIT professor Ed Roberts defined innovation as invention plus exploitation. Innovation doesn’t have to be complex. It’s something that every one, at every level of an organisation, can participate in. Innovation on a grand scale is what can allow companies to excel,and move from good to great. There were companies who through path breaking innovation redefined how people should use their computers, listen to music or watch movies. Businesses that don’t change risk being left behind. To avoid that risk, they have to put the power of innovation to work. This could mean developing the next super trend, or ensuring that you’re doing the best with what you have.
Innovation to be effective has to be bottom up rather than top down,if one can introduce the culture of innovation in their organisation, the people at the middle and bottom end of the hierarchy will drive it forward. In fact, some of the game changing innovations of today have been accidentally “stumbled upon” by assistants or lower level employees.
There are two different types of innovation, incremental and radical. Incremental innovation generally exploits existing forms or technologies. It either improves upon something that already exists or reconfigures an existing technology to serve some other purpose. Like the improvements in mobile phones, personal computer, or introductions of different versions of operating systems. Improvements are based on the same fundamental technology. A radical innovation, on the other hand is some thing new to the world, and a departure from existing technology or methods.
Harvard professor Clayton Christensen has used the term disruptive technology to describe technical innovations that are radical.
Disruptive technologies displace the established technology and contribute to or speed up the decline of companies whose business models are based on them. Mostly, disruptive technologies create new markets. Those markets are initially small, but sometimes grow large.
A good example would be the digital imaging over film. This completely replaced the existing market, where long established players like Kodak were forced to go out of business.