Friday, January 27, 2012

The Role Of Innovation in Competitiveness

We now live in an innovation economy in America.  As Dean DiBiase says, When old solutions are applied to new challenges, the results are never good. 

While America cannot rely on its old place in the world, innovation keeps us moving ahead of the rest of the world!  Innovation is a word that many today believe is hard to define.  It seems it is akin to Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart who said he couldn't define pornography but would "know it when I see it."

Here is one definition of innovation to help you know it when you see it:

  1. 1  The introduction of a good (product), which is new to consumers, or one of higher quality than was available in the past;
  2. 2  Methods of production, which are new to a particular branch of industry. These are not necessarily based on new scientific discoveries and may have, for example, already been used in other industrial sectors;
  3. 3  The opening of new markets;
  4. 4  The use of new sources of supply;
  5. 5  New forms of competition, that leads to the restructuring of an industry.

Michael Porter of Harvard, one of my favorites on competition and innovation, defined innovation well:
  1. to include both improvements in technology and better methods or ways of doing things. It can be manifested in product changes, process changes, new approaches to marketing, new forms of distribution, and new concepts of scope . . . [innovation] results as much from organizational learning as from formal R&D.

What I am reading about innovation today:









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