Innovation

Abstract

Innovation is novelty - it involves doing new things in new ways. So new products, new processes, new organizational methods, new services, and so on, are all part of innovation. Technological innovation transforms and improves the technical attributes and performance characteristics of products and processes, and through this introduces dynamic change and productivity growth into the economic system. For this reason, all theories of economic growth rest in one way or another on ides concerning innovation and technological change. In studying innovation, most modern research has focused on the sources, nature and characteristics of knowledge and learning. If innovation is novelty, then it must also involve learning (after all, if we already knew how to do something, it would not be an innovation). If we think of technology as forms of knowledge related to productive transformations, then innovative learning is the process that expands the existing knowledge base.