Innovación

The successful market introduction of something new and useful OR, combining separate things in a new way.

Innovation, invention, development and evolution are all words that are used flexibly to describe how the state of knowledge, and of the application of knowledge, changes and develops. Separating these out to use in this report requires that their relationship to each other be defined. Invention is an entirely creative activity that does not require any application to be valid. Some inventions do lead to applications but are then innovations.

Some innovations (i.e. introducing something new and useful or new combinations – see box) are small and, whether inventive or not, may be conveniently regarded as evolutionary change where the implication is usually that no fundamental change in the principles of operation are involved. Innovations of these types will continue to be important generators of change.

Other innovations are of such a scale, or imply such a transforming change in fundamental ways of working that they are seen as step change innovations at the higher system level.

(Source: CREATE Project. Final Report:October 2010)