WHAT IS INNOVATION?

The short answer consisted of a single term -pronunciado with a big smile-by photographer Volkan in Istanbul: "Revolution." Not far from there, in Jerusalem, Amnon Shashua defined it as "a dream come true," while in Sydney, at the other end of the planet.
Both the Petit Larousse and Petit Robert (online) are, in this case, a distressing poverty. Define "innovation" and "innovative action" and "novelty or processing is introduced into a thing." Wikipedia, meanwhile, said in its English site that "innovation is something original, new and important no matter what field- which bursts (or imposed) in a market or a society. "

For Wikipedia in Spanish, "Innovation literally means innovating. In colloquial and general use, the concept is used unspecifically in the sense of new ideas and inventions and economic implementation. Strictly speaking, however, it is said that ideas can only be innovations after they are implemented as new products, services or procedures and actually found a successful application prevailing in the market, through dissemination ".

Say, in a nutshell, that is a new solution that finds its niche in the market and / or society. This is the big difference with "invention" which is simply defined as the same dictionary, such as "create or discover."

But we lean too especially in France to believe that innovation is only a matter of technology and, hence, the exclusive domain of engineers. Grave mistake, underlined perfectly the definition given by the OECD in the Oslo Manual.

For this organization and its member countries, there are four types of innovations:

Products or services. They refer to the introduction of new elements or improvements to that which already exists.
Procedures or processes. Are based, for example, in production methods distribution.
Commercialization. Conception, promotion, pricing, etc.
Organization. It can involve both internal relations of a company as external.
At the end of my travels, inspired by our respondents and different readings that I could complete, I came to the following definition: Innovation is a new assembly, improbable but accepted, not all new elements to address a problem or take a chance.

The novelty is, in fact, the combination (as Schumpeter says), and the impact is measured from the acceptance of society in general and / or market.

The important thing is that if we accept the dictionary definition, added to the fields by the OECD and this simple concept of new combination defined, we will understand better than the ability to innovate it does not depend on the level of development and industrialization, which is not exclusive affair technology and therefore can innovate everywhere.