Inno-what?

BY CARLOS GARCÍA

Mmm… Such an interesting topic! And nowadays it’s true cool. INNOVATiON is one of these days most used words. Just Google it and you’ll get 119 million results. But if we are to be talking about it I would like to know what we’re talking about. There are different sources of information that we should accept to be ”true”, but everyone may also have their own opinion, which I’d be glad to hear.

First of all we can try several dictionaries and thesaurus. I frequently use an on-line dictionary called “The free dictionary“, which is obviously free, and automatically gives you the contents from other interesting and specialized (medical, legal,…) ones, as Collins, Cambridge, etc, and also wikipedia. This dictionary also offers American and British English pronunciation, which is very useful. I also like the VISUAL THESAURUS which presents the words in a mind-map or thinkmap style, and you can navigate through the related meanings and find new relationships between words, but you have to subscribe although you can try it for free.

Well then, let’s try INNOVATION, and we’ll see that all the sources refer to meanings as introducing something new, invention, creativity, change, revolution, and also things like freshness, modern, etc.

It is also important to know what the European Union thinks about it. I’ve found a kind of legal definition in relation to the Lisbon strategy:

Definition. Innovation consists of the successful production, assimilation and exploitation of novelty in the economic and social spheres.

Importance of innovation for companies. Innovation helps companies conquer new markets or stave off competition. It comes in many different forms, ranging from an invention arising from R&D to efforts to adapt production procedures, tap new markets, use new organisational approaches or create new marketing concepts.

But far away from the frozen contents of a dictionary or the legal aspects at EU level, and according to the suggestive (“stimulating further thought”) title of this blog, INNOVATION is related to ACTION, so here we have the INNOV-ACTION. And I personally agree with this term. For me, Innovation is not an act but an attitude, or “…the tendency towards a mode of response, toward the object in question” according to McGraw-Hill’s Concise Dictionary of Modern Medicine. It is a way of facing and tackling problems and challenges

In my next post I would like to explain why I believe that innovators are not the same as inventors, explorers, pioneers, and the like, and also how PRODINTEC is helping companies in the process of INNOV-ACTION to increase their competitiveness.

Carlos García