What is Innovation?

I have always been interested in the topic of Innovation. Both from a business perspective as well as personally.

But what is innovation? There are many different definitions. Just do a quick search and you will finds dozen’s of definitions.

For me there are two main aspects to innovation. There has to something new – and it has to have a measurable impact. Innovation can be many things. A new product (which is what most people think of first), a process change or a new business model. Just to name a few. It is also interesting to see what is not mentioned here: It is not invention; It is not necessarily creative. Although both can be part of it.

One more thing that is really important. It needs to be different for the end user in mind. This is where we should see the impact of an innovation. If it s a new product or service an innovation need to be adopted by the market / customers. There has to be scale.

I believe innovation is becoming even more interesting and important these days with the move towards a digital economy.

Picture: Karlsruhe no22 / 2015 – Ingo Hoffmann – All rights reserved.
More pictures: www.garlerie-hoffmann.net