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108-474: Innovation is the practical implementation of ideas that result in the introduction of new goods or services or improvement in offering goods or services. ISO TC 279 in the standard ISO 56000:2020 defines innovation as "a new or changed entity, realizing or redistributing value ". Others have different definitions; a common element in the definitions is a focus on newness, improvement, and spread of ideas or technologies. Innovation often takes place through

216-479: A performance-measurement data and management system that allows city officials to maintain statistics on several areas from crime trends to the conditions of potholes . This system aided in better evaluation of policies and procedures with accountability and efficiency in terms of time and money. In its first year, CitiStat saved the city $ 13.2 million. Even mass transit systems have innovated with hybrid bus fleets to real-time tracking at bus stands. In addition,

324-414: A complex idea may not have any corresponding physical object, though its particular constituent elements may severally be the reproductions of actual perceptions. Thus the idea of a centaur is a complex mental picture composed of the ideas of man and horse , that of a mermaid of a woman and a fish . "Ideas are to objects [of perception] as constellations are to stars," writes Walter Benjamin in

432-401: A direct relationship to ideas. In some cases, authors can be granted limited legal monopolies on the manner in which certain works are expressed. This is known colloquially as copyright , although the term intellectual property is used mistakenly in place of copyright . Copyright law regulating the aforementioned monopolies generally does not cover the actual ideas. The law does not bestow

540-399: A fellowship year at Columbia University to study statistics more intensively. During that year he also worked on his Ph.D. thesis, an exploratory attempt to model changes in the size distribution of wage income using interacting Markov processes for employment-unemployment and wage rates. In 1949, just before going off to Columbia, he was offered and accepted an assistant professorship in

648-703: A few original cultures, the Adam of the Bible, or several cultural circles that overlap. Evolutionary diffusion theory holds that cultures are influenced by one another but that similar ideas can be developed in isolation. In the mid-20th century, social scientists began to study how and why ideas spread from one person or culture to another. Everett Rogers pioneered diffusion of innovations studies, using research to prove factors in adoption and profiles of adopters of ideas. In 1976, in his book The Selfish Gene , Richard Dawkins suggested applying biological evolutionary theories to

756-477: A firm, other types of innovation include: social innovation , religious innovation, sustainable innovation (or green innovation ), and responsible innovation . One type of innovation that has been the focus of recent literature is open innovation or " crowd sourcing ." Open innovation refers to the use of individuals outside of an organizational context who have no expertise in a given area to solve complex problems. Similar to open innovation, user innovation

864-470: A general law, gave a legal right to the exclusive use of an idea. In some other countries it is sometimes done, in a great case, and by a special and personal act but, generally speaking, other nations have thought that these monopolies produce more embarrassment than advantage to society. Patent law regulates various aspects related to the functional manifestation of inventions based on new ideas or incremental improvements to existing ones. Thus, patents have

972-445: A good itself, and so on for all things that we set down as many. Now, again, we refer to them as one idea of each as though the idea were one; and we address it as that which really is ." "That's so." "And, moreover, we say that the former are seen, but not intellected, while the ideas are intellected but not seen." Descartes often wrote of the meaning of the idea as an image or representation, often but not necessarily "in

1080-466: A great deal of innovation is done by those actually implementing and using technologies and products as part of their normal activities. Sometimes user-innovators may become entrepreneurs , selling their product, they may choose to trade their innovation in exchange for other innovations, or they may be adopted by their suppliers. Nowadays, they may also choose to freely reveal their innovations, using methods like open source . In such networks of innovation

1188-401: A multidisciplinary definition and arrived at the following: "Innovation is the multi-stage process whereby organizations transform ideas into new/improved products, service or processes, in order to advance, compete and differentiate themselves successfully in their marketplace" In a study of how the software industry considers innovation, the following definition given by Crossan and Apaydin

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1296-469: A new invention. Technical innovation often manifests itself via the engineering process when the problem being solved is of a technical or scientific nature. The opposite of innovation is exnovation . Surveys of the literature on innovation have found a variety of definitions. In 2009, Baregheh et al. found around 60 definitions in different scientific papers, while a 2014 survey found over 40. Based on their survey, Baragheh et al. attempted to formulate

1404-434: A perception are by various authorities contrasted in various ways. "Difference in degree of intensity", "comparative absence of bodily movement on the part of the subject", "comparative dependence on mental activity", are suggested by psychologists as characteristic of an idea as compared with a perception . An idea, in the narrower and generally accepted sense of a mental reproduction, is frequently composite. That is, as in

1512-427: A piece of music, for example, can both be called 'art' without belonging to the same substance. They are related as forms of art (the term 'art' in this illustration would be a 'mode of relations'). In this way, Locke concluded that the formal ambiguity around ideas he initially sought to clarify had been resolved. Hume differs from Locke by limiting idea to only one of two possible types of perception. The other one

1620-492: A political setting. Machiavelli portrays it as a strategy a Prince may employ in order to cope with a constantly changing world as well as the corruption within it. Here innovation is described as introducing change in government (new laws and institutions); Machiavelli's later book The Discourses (1528) characterises innovation as imitation, as a return to the original that has been corrupted by people and by time. Thus for Machiavelli innovation came with positive connotations. This

1728-461: A product or service based on the known needs of current customers (e.g. faster microprocessors, flat screen televisions). Disruptive innovation in contrast refers to a process by which a new product or service creates a new market (e.g. transistor radio, free crowdsourced encyclopedia, etc.), eventually displacing established competitors. According to Christensen, disruptive innovations are critical to long-term success in business. Disruptive innovation

1836-439: A public service institution, or a new venture started by a lone individual in the family kitchen. It is the means by which the entrepreneur either creates new wealth-producing resources or endows existing resources with enhanced potential for creating wealth. In general, innovation is distinguished from creativity by its emphasis on the implementation of creative ideas in an economic setting. Amabile and Pratt in 2016, drawing on

1944-432: A range of different agents, by chance, or as a result of a major system failure. According to Peter F. Drucker , the general sources of innovations are changes in industry structure, in market structure, in local and global demographics, in human perception, in the amount of available scientific knowledge, etc. In the simplest linear model of innovation the traditionally recognized source is manufacturer innovation . This

2052-464: A reflexive, spontaneous manner, even without thinking or serious reflection , for example, when we talk about the idea of a person or a place. A new or an original idea can often lead to innovation . The word idea comes from Greek ἰδέα idea "form, pattern", from the root of ἰδεῖν idein , "to see." The argument over the underlying nature of ideas is opened by Plato , whose exposition of his theory of forms —which recurs and accumulates over

2160-440: A result, organizations may incorporate users in focus groups (user centered approach), work closely with so-called lead users (lead user approach), or users might adapt their products themselves. The lead user method focuses on idea generation based on leading users to develop breakthrough innovations. U-STIR, a project to innovate Europe 's surface transportation system, employs such workshops. Regarding this user innovation ,

2268-632: A scholarship at the age of 16. At Harvard, his first studies were in sociology and anthropology as well as elementary economics. In 1942, Solow left the university and joined the U.S. Army . Because he was fluent in German, the Army put him on a task force whose primary purpose was to intercept, interpret, and send back German messages to base. He served briefly in North Africa and Sicily , and later in Italy until he

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2376-425: A subject of property. Society may give an exclusive right to the profits arising from them, as an encouragement to men to pursue ideas which may produce utility, but this may or may not be done, according to the will and convenience of the society, without claim or complaint from anybody. Accordingly, it is a fact, as far as I am informed, that England was, until we copied her, the only country on earth which ever, by

2484-422: A word in which this word has become, and performs, as a symbol." as George Steiner summarizes. In this way techne-- art and technology—may be represented, ideally, as "discrete, fully autonomous objects...[thus entering] into fusion without losing their identity." Diffusion studies explore the spread of ideas from culture to culture. Some anthropological theories hold that all cultures imitate ideas from one or

2592-445: Is anachronistic to apply these terms to thinkers from antiquity, it clarifies the argument between Plato and Aristotle if we call Plato an idealist thinker and Aristotle an empiricist thinker. This antagonism between empiricism and idealism generally characterizes the dynamism of the argument over the theory of ideas up to the present. This schism in theory has never been resolved to the satisfaction of thinkers from both sides of

2700-577: Is called "impression", and is more lively: these are perceptions we have "when we hear, or see, or feel, or love, or hate, or desire, or will." Ideas are more complex and are built upon these more basic and more grounded perceptions. Hume shared with Locke the basic empiricist premise that it is only from life experiences (whether their own or others') that humans' knowledge of the existence of anything outside of themselves can be ultimately derived, that they shall carry on doing what they are prompted to do by their emotional drives of varying kinds. In choosing

2808-484: Is changing with the increased use of technology and companies are becoming increasingly competitive. Companies will have to downsize or reengineer their operations to remain competitive. This will affect employment as businesses will be forced to reduce the number of people employed while accomplishing the same amount of work if not more. For instance, former Mayor Martin O'Malley pushed the City of Baltimore to use CitiStat ,

2916-402: Is derived from nature at all, it would be singular to admit a natural and even an hereditary right to inventors. It is agreed by those who have seriously considered the subject, that no individual has, of natural right, a separate property in an acre of land, for instance. By a universal law, indeed, whatever, whether fixed or movable, belongs to all men equally and in common, is the property for

3024-411: Is his principles of mutually enhanced contrasts and of assimilation and dissimilation (i.e. in color and form perception and his advocacy of objective methods of expression and of recording results, especially in language. Another is the principle of heterogony of ends — that multiply motivated acts lead to unintended side effects which in turn become motives for new actions. C. S. Peirce published

3132-423: Is however an exception in the usage of the concept of innovation from the 16th century and onward. No innovator from the renaissance until the late 19th century ever thought of applying the word innovator upon themselves, it was a word used to attack enemies. From the 1400s through the 1600s, the concept of innovation was pejorative – the term was an early-modern synonym for "rebellion", "revolt" and " heresy ". In

3240-482: Is new to the firm, new to the market, new to the industry, or new to the world) and kind of innovation (i.e. whether it is process or product-service system innovation). Organizational researchers have also distinguished innovation separately from creativity, by providing an updated definition of these two related constructs: Workplace creativity concerns the cognitive and behavioral processes applied when attempting to generate novel ideas. Workplace innovation concerns

3348-503: Is often enabled by disruptive technology. Marco Iansiti and Karim R. Lakhani define foundational technology as having the potential to create new foundations for global technology systems over the longer term. Foundational technology tends to transform business operating models as entirely new business models emerge over many years, with gradual and steady adoption of the innovation leading to waves of technological and institutional change that gain momentum more slowly. The advent of

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3456-458: Is often used to help optimize the design of web sites and mobile apps . This is used by major sites such as amazon.com , Facebook , Google , and Netflix . Procter & Gamble uses computer-simulated products and online user panels to conduct larger numbers of experiments to guide the design, packaging, and shelf placement of consumer products. Capital One uses this technique to drive credit card marketing offers. Scholars have argued that

3564-411: Is said to be obscure. He argued that to understand an idea clearly we should ask ourselves what difference its application would make to our evaluation of a proposed solution to the problem at hand. Pragmatism (a term he appropriated for use in this context), he defended, was a method for ascertaining the meaning of terms (as a theory of meaning). The originality of his ideas is in their rejection of what

3672-469: Is sometimes used in pharmaceutical drug discovery . Thousands of chemical compounds are subjected to high-throughput screening to see if they have any activity against a target molecule which has been identified as biologically significant to a disease. Promising compounds can then be studied; modified to improve efficacy and reduce side effects, evaluated for cost of manufacture; and if successful turned into treatments. The related technique of A/B testing

3780-591: Is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over

3888-529: Is the object of the understanding when a man thinks, I have used it to express whatever is meant by phantasm, notion, species, or whatever it is which the mind can be employed about in thinking; And I could not avoid frequently using it." He said he regarded the contribution offered in his essay as necessary to examine our own abilities and discern what objects our understandings were, or were not, fitted to deal with. In this style of ideal conception other outstanding figures followed in his footsteps — Hume and Kant in

3996-734: Is when companies rely on users of their goods and services to come up with, help to develop, and even help to implement new ideas. Innovation must be understood in the historical setting in which its processes were and are taking place. The first full-length discussion about innovation was published by the Greek philosopher and historian Xenophon (430–355 BCE). He viewed the concept as multifaceted and connected it to political action. The word for innovation that he uses, kainotomia , had previously occurred in two plays by Aristophanes ( c.  446 – c.  386 BCE). Plato (died c.  348 BCE) discussed innovation in his Laws dialogue and

4104-642: Is where a person or business innovates in order to sell the innovation. Another source of innovation is end-user innovation . This is where a person or company develops an innovation for their own (personal or in-house) use because existing products do not meet their needs. MIT economist Eric von Hippel identified end-user innovation as the most important source in his classic book on the subject, "The Sources of Innovation" . The robotics engineer Joseph F. Engelberger asserts that innovations require only three things: The Kline chain-linked model of innovation places emphasis on potential market needs as drivers of

4212-533: The Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College lawsuit. Signers of the brief include Alan B. Krueger , George A. Akerlof , Janet Yellen , and Cecilia Rouse . Solow was one of the supporters of Joe Biden 's Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 . Solow died at his home in Lexington, Massachusetts , on December 21, 2023, at the age of 99. Solow's model of economic growth , often known as

4320-586: The Council of Economic Advisers (1961–62) and member of the President's Commission on Income Maintenance (1968–70). His studies focused mainly in the fields of employment and growth policies, and the theory of capital. In 1961 he won the American Economic Association's John Bates Clark Award , given to the best economist under age forty. In 1979 he served as president of that association. In 1987, he won

4428-590: The Economics Department at Massachusetts Institute of Technology . At MIT he taught courses in statistics and econometrics . Solow's interest gradually changed to macroeconomics . For almost 40 years, Solow and Paul Samuelson worked together on many landmark theories: von Neumann growth theory (1953), theory of capital (1956), linear programming (1958) and the Phillips curve (1960). Solow also held several government positions, including senior economist for

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4536-453: The Jevons paradox , that describes negative consequences of eco-efficiency as energy-reducing effects tend to trigger mechanisms leading to energy-increasing effects. Several frameworks have been proposed for defining types of innovation. One framework proposed by Clayton Christensen draws a distinction between sustaining and disruptive innovations . Sustaining innovation is the improvement of

4644-782: The Nobel Prize for his analysis of economic growth and in 1999, he received the National Medal of Science . In 2011, he received an honorary degree in Doctor of Science from Tufts University . Solow was the founder of the Cournot Foundation and the Cournot Centre. After the death of his colleague Franco Modigliani , Solow accepted an appointment as new Chairman of the I.S.E.O Institute, an Italian nonprofit cultural association which organizes international conferences and summer schools. He

4752-653: The Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2014. Four of his PhD students, George Akerlof , Joseph Stiglitz , Peter Diamond , and William Nordhaus , later received Nobel Memorial Prizes in Economic Sciences in their own right. Robert Solow was born in Brooklyn, New York, into a Jewish family on August 23, 1924, the oldest of three children. He attended local public school and excelled academically early in life. In September 1940, Solow went to Harvard College with

4860-614: The Solow–Swan neoclassical growth model as the model was independently discovered by Trevor W. Swan and published in "The Economic Record" in 1956, allows the determinants of economic growth to be separated into increases in inputs ( labour and capital ) and technical progress. The reason these models are called " exogenous " growth models is the saving rate is taken to be exogenously given. Subsequent work derives savings behavior from an inter-temporal utility-maximizing framework. Using his model, Solow (1957) calculated that about four-fifths of

4968-642: The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development 's HOPE VI initiatives turned severely distressed public housing in urban areas into revitalized , mixed-income environments; the Harlem Children's Zone used a community-based approach to educate local area children; and the Environmental Protection Agency 's brownfield grants facilitates turning over brownfields for environmental protection , green spaces , community and commercial development . Innovation may occur due to effort from

5076-425: The determinism of the empirical subject. Kant felt that it is precisely in knowing its limits that philosophy exists. The business of philosophy he thought was not to give rules, but to analyze the private judgement of good common sense. Whereas Kant declares limits to knowledge ("we can never know the thing in itself"), in his epistemological work, Rudolf Steiner sees ideas as "objects of experience" which

5184-754: The packet-switched communication protocol TCP/IP —originally introduced in 1972 to support a single use case for United States Department of Defense electronic communication (email), and which gained widespread adoption only in the mid-1990s with the advent of the World Wide Web —is a foundational technology. Another framework was suggested by Henderson and Clark. They divide innovation into four types; While Henderson and Clark as well as Christensen talk about technical innovation there are other kinds of innovation as well, such as service innovation and organizational innovation. As distinct from business-centric views of innovation concentrating on generating profit for

5292-457: The 1800s people promoting capitalism saw socialism as an innovation and spent a lot of energy working against it. For instance, Goldwin Smith (1823-1910) saw the spread of social innovations as an attack on money and banks. These social innovations were socialism, communism, nationalization, cooperative associations. In the 20th century, the concept of innovation did not become popular until after

5400-833: The 18th century, Arthur Schopenhauer in the 19th century, and Bertrand Russell , Ludwig Wittgenstein , and Karl Popper in the 20th century. Locke always believed in the good sense — not pushing things to extremes and while taking fully into account the plain facts of the matter. He prioritized common-sense ideas that struck him as "good-tempered, moderate, and down-to-earth." As John Locke studied humans in his work "An Essay Concerning Human Understanding" he continually referenced Descartes for ideas as he asked this fundamental question: "When we are concerned with something about which we have no certain knowledge, what rules or standards should guide how confident we allow ourselves to be that our opinions are right?" Put in another way, he inquired into how humans might verify their ideas, and considered

5508-465: The Second World War of 1939–1945. This is the point in time when people started to talk about technological product innovation and tie it to the idea of economic growth and competitive advantage. Joseph Schumpeter (1883–1950), who contributed greatly to the study of innovation economics , is seen as the one who made the term popular. Schumpeter argued that industries must incessantly revolutionize

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5616-490: The beginning of the 20th century, which had huge impacts for the economic concepts of factor endowments and comparative advantage as new combinations of resources or production techniques constantly transform markets to satisfy consumer needs. Hence, innovative behaviour becomes relevant for economic success. An early model included only three phases of innovation. According to Utterback (1971), these phases were: 1) idea generation, 2) problem solving, and 3) implementation. By

5724-420: The causes of economic growth. For example, rather than assuming, as Solow did, that people save at a given constant rate, subsequent work applied a consumer-optimization framework to derive savings behavior endogenously, allowing saving rates to vary at different points in time, depending on income flows, for example. In the 1980s efforts have focused on the role of technological progress in the economy, leading to

5832-422: The company of Nobel laureate William Shockley , co-inventor of the transistor , left to form an independent firm, Fairchild Semiconductor . After several years, Fairchild developed into a formidable presence in the sector. Eventually, these founders left to start their own companies based on their own unique ideas, and then leading employees started their own firms. Over the next 20 years this process resulted in

5940-406: The concepts of innovation and technology transfer revealed overlap. The more radical and revolutionary innovations tend to emerge from R&D, while more incremental innovations may emerge from practice – but there are many exceptions to each of these trends. Information technology and changing business processes and management style can produce a work climate favorable to innovation. For example,

6048-409: The course of his many dialogs—appropriates and adds a new sense to the Greek word for things that are "seen" (re. εἶδος) that highlights those elements of perception which are encountered without material or objective reference available to the eyes (re. ἰδέα ). As this argument is disseminated the word "idea" begins to take on connotations that would be more familiarly associated with the term today. In

6156-422: The depreciating nature of capital which remains constantly positive. The third curve (bottom) conveys savings/investment per worker. As the old machinery wears down and breaks, new capital goods must be bought to replace the old. The point where the two lines meet is known as the steady state level, which means that the nation is producing just enough to be able to replace the old capital. Countries that are closer to

6264-448: The development of more-effective products , processes, services , technologies , art works or business models that innovators make available to markets , governments and society . Innovation is related to, but not the same as, invention : innovation is more apt to involve the practical implementation of an invention (i.e. new / improved ability) to make a meaningful impact in a market or society, and not all innovations require

6372-536: The disagreement and is represented today in the split between analytic and continental schools of philosophy. Persistent contradictions between classical physics and quantum mechanics may be pointed to as a rough analogy for the gap between the two schools of thought. Plato in Ancient Greece was one of the earliest philosophers to provide a detailed discussion of ideas and of the thinking process (in Plato's Greek

6480-463: The distinctions between different types of ideas. Locke found that an idea "can simply mean some sort of brute experience." He shows that there are "No innate principles in the mind." Thus, he concludes that "our ideas are all experienced in nature." An experience can either be a sensation or a reflection: "consider whether there are any innate ideas in the mind before any are brought in by the impression from sensation or reflection." Therefore, an idea

6588-721: The economic structure from within, that is: innovate with better or more effective processes and products, as well as with market distribution (such as the transition from the craft shop to factory). He famously asserted that " creative destruction is the essential fact about capitalism ". In business and in economics , innovation can provide a catalyst for growth when entrepreneurs continuously search for better ways to satisfy their consumer base with improved quality, durability, service and price - searches which may come to fruition in innovation with advanced technologies and organizational strategies. Schumpeter's findings coincided with rapid advances in transportation and communications in

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6696-459: The empirical object is not prior to its perception by a knowledgeable subject, in other words. He also published many papers on logic in relation to ideas . G. F. Stout and J. M. Baldwin , in the Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology , define the idea as "the reproduction with a more or less adequate image , of an object not actually present to the senses." They point out that an idea and

6804-562: The establishment of new management systems. It is both a process and an outcome. American sociologist Everett Rogers , defined it as follows: "An idea, practice, or object that is perceived as new by an individual or other unit of adoption" According to Alan Altshuler and Robert D. Behn, innovation includes original invention and creative use. These writers define innovation as generation, admission and realization of new ideas, products, services and processes. Two main dimensions of innovation are degree of novelty (i.e. whether an innovation

6912-408: The example given above of the idea of a chair, a great many objects, differing materially in detail, all call a single idea. When a man, for example, has obtained an idea of chairs in general by comparison with which he can say "This is a chair, that is a stool", he has what is known as an "abstract idea" distinct from the reproduction in his mind of any particular chair (see abstraction ). Furthermore,

7020-441: The example of beauty as a mode. He points to combinations of color and form as qualities constitutive of this mode. Substances , however, are distinct from modes. Substances convey the underlying formal unity of certain objects, such as dogs, cats, or tables. Relations represent the relationship between two or more ideas that contain analogous elements to one another without the implication of underlying formal unity. A painting or

7128-458: The experimental method failed, he turned to other objectively valuable aids , specifically to those products of cultural communal life which lead one to infer particular mental motives. Outstanding among these are speech, myth, and social custom. Wundt designed the basic mental activity apperception — a unifying function which should be understood as an activity of the will. Many aspects of his empirical physiological psychology are used today. One

7236-458: The external world . In so doing, he includes not only ideas of memory and imagination , but also perceptual processes, whereas other psychologists confine the term to the first two groups. One of Wundt's main concerns was to investigate conscious processes in their own context by experiment and introspection . He regarded both of these as exact methods , interrelated in that experimentation created optimal conditions for introspection. Where

7344-443: The fifth book of his Republic , Plato defines philosophy as the love of this formal (as opposed to visual) way of seeing. Plato advances the theory that perceived but immaterial objects of awareness constituted a realm of deathless forms or ideas from which the material world emanated. Aristotle challenges Plato in this area, positing that the phenomenal world of ideas arises as mental composites of remembered observations. Though it

7452-428: The first full statement of pragmatism in his important works " How to Make Our Ideas Clear " (1878) and " The Fixation of Belief " (1877). In "How to Make Our Ideas Clear" he proposed that a clear idea (in his study he uses concept and idea as synonymic) is defined as one, when it is apprehended such as it will be recognized wherever it is met, and no other will be mistaken for it. If it fails of this clearness, it

7560-424: The globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be

7668-428: The growing use of mobile data terminals in vehicles, that serve as communication hubs between vehicles and a control center, automatically send data on location, passenger counts, engine performance, mileage and other information. This tool helps to deliver and manage transportation systems. Still other innovative strategies include hospitals digitizing medical information in electronic medical records . For example,

7776-452: The growth in US output per worker was attributable to technical progress. Solow also was the first to develop a growth model with different vintages of capital. The idea behind Solow's vintage capital growth model is that new capital is more valuable than old (vintage) capital because new capital is produced through known technology. He first states that capital must be a finite entity because all of

7884-910: The innovation process, and describes the complex and often iterative feedback loops between marketing, design, manufacturing, and R&D. In the 21st century the Islamic State (IS) movement, while decrying religious innovations , has innovated in military tactics, recruitment, ideology and geopolitical activity. Innovation by businesses is achieved in many ways, with much attention now given to formal research and development (R&D) for "breakthrough innovations". R&D help spur on patents and other scientific innovations that leads to productive growth in such areas as industry, medicine, engineering, and government. Yet, innovations can be developed by less formal on-the-job modifications of practice, through exchange and combination of professional experience and by many other routes. Investigation of relationship between

7992-475: The innovator. This concept meant "renewing" and was incorporated into the new Latin verb word innovo ("I renew" or "I restore") in the centuries that followed. The Vulgate version of the Bible (late 4th century CE) used the word in spiritual as well as political contexts. It also appeared in poetry, mainly with spiritual connotations, but was also connected to political, material and cultural aspects. Machiavelli 's The Prince (1513) discusses innovation in

8100-420: The introduction to his The Origin of German Tragic Drama . "The set of concepts which assist in the representation of an idea lend it actuality as such a configuration. For phenomena are not incorporated into ideas. They are not contained in them. Ideas are, rather, their objective virtual arrangement, their objective interpretation." Benjamin advances, "That an idea is that moment in the substance and being of

8208-596: The key element in providing aggressive top-line growth, and for increasing bottom-line results". One survey across a large number of manufacturing and services organizations found that systematic programs of organizational innovation are most frequently driven by: improved quality , creation of new markets , extension of the product range, reduced labor costs , improved production processes , reduced materials cost, reduced environmental damage , replacement of products / services , reduced energy consumption, and conformance to regulations . Ideas An idea arises in

8316-432: The legal status of property upon ideas per se. Instead, laws purport to regulate events related to the usage, copying, production, sale and other forms of exploitation of the fundamental expression of a work, that may or may not carry ideas. Copyright law is fundamentally different from patent law in this respect: patents do grant monopolies on ideas (more on this below). A copyright is meant to regulate some aspects of

8424-478: The literature, distinguish between creativity ("the production of novel and useful ideas by an individual or small group of individuals working together") and innovation ("the successful implementation of creative ideas within an organization"). In 1957 the economist Robert Solow was able to demonstrate that economic growth had two components. The first component could be attributed to growth in production including wage labour and capital . The second component

8532-400: The main purpose for innovation today is profit maximization and capital valorisation . Consequently, programs of organizational innovation are typically tightly linked to organizational goals and growth objectives, to the business plan , and to market competitive positioning . Davila et al. (2006) note, "Companies cannot grow through cost reduction and reengineering alone... Innovation is

8640-408: The meaning behind his work, Solow used a graphical design to illustrate his concepts. On the x-axis he puts capital per worker and for the y-axis he uses output per worker. The reason for graphing capital and output per worker is due to his assumption that the nation is at full employment. The first (top) curve represents the output produced at each given level of capital. The second (middle) curve shows

8748-407: The means to those ends, they shall follow their accustomed associations of ideas. Hume has contended and defended the notion that "reason alone is merely the 'slave of the passions'." Immanuel Kant defines ideas by distinguishing them from concepts . Concepts arise by the compositing of experience into abstract categorial representations of presumed or encountered empirical objects whereas

8856-481: The mind apprehends, much as the eye apprehends light. In Goethean Science (1883), he declares, "Thinking ... is no more and no less an organ of perception than the eye or ear. Just as the eye of perception perceives colors and the ear sounds, so thinking perceives ideas." He holds this to be the premise upon which Goethe made his natural-scientific observations. Wundt widens the term from Kant's usage to include conscious representation of some object or process of

8964-417: The mind", which was well known in the vernacular . Despite Descartes' invention of the non-Platonic use of the term, he at first followed this vernacular use. In his Meditations on First Philosophy he says, "Some of my thoughts are like images of things, and it is to these alone that the name 'idea' properly belongs." He sometimes maintained that ideas were innate and uses of the term idea diverge from

9072-444: The moment of him who occupies it, but when he relinquishes the occupation, the property goes with it. Stable ownership is the gift of social law, and is given late in the progress of society. It would be curious then, if an idea, the fugitive fermentation of an individual brain, could, of natural right, be claimed in exclusive and stable property. If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it

9180-663: The momentous startup-company explosion of information-technology firms. Silicon Valley began as 65 new enterprises born out of Shockley's eight former employees. All organizations can innovate, including for example hospitals, universities, and local governments. The organization requires a proper structure in order to retain competitive advantage. Organizations can also improve profits and performance by providing work groups opportunities and resources to innovate, in addition to employee's core job tasks. Executives and managers have been advised to break away from traditional ways of thinking and use change to their advantage. The world of work

9288-449: The objects of opinion; real knowledge can only be had of unchanging ideas. Furthermore, ideas for Plato appear to serve as universals; consider the following passage from the Republic : "We both assert that there are," I said, "and distinguish in speech, many fair things, many good things, and so on for each kind of thing." "Yes, so we do." "And we also assert that there is a fair itself,

9396-411: The origin of ideas, for Kant, is a priori to experience. Regulative ideas , for example, are ideals that one must tend towards, but by definition may not be completely realized as objects of empirical experience. Liberty , according to Kant, is an idea whereas "tree" (as an abstraction covering all species of trees) is a concept . The autonomy of the rational and universal subject is opposed to

9504-541: The original creation and fixation thereof, without any extra steps. While creation usually involves an idea, the idea in itself does not suffice for the purposes of claiming copyright. Confidentiality and nondisclosure agreements are legal instruments that assist corporations and individuals in keeping ideas from escaping to the general public. Generally, these instruments are covered by contract law. Robert Solow Robert Merton Solow , GCIH ( / ˈ s oʊ l oʊ / ; August 23, 1924 – December 21, 2023)

9612-576: The original primary scholastic use. He provides multiple non-equivalent definitions of the term, uses it to refer to as many as six distinct kinds of entities, and divides ideas inconsistently into various genetic categories. For him knowledge took the form of ideas and philosophical investigation is devoted to the consideration of these entities. John Locke 's use of idea stands in striking contrast to Plato's. In his Introduction to An Essay Concerning Human Understanding , Locke defines idea as "that term which, I think, serves best to stand for whatsoever

9720-462: The political and societal context in which innovation is taking place. According to Shannon Walsh, "innovation today is best understood as innovation under capital" (p. 346). This means that the current hegemonic purpose for innovation is capital valorisation and profit maximization, exemplified by the appropriation of knowledge (e.g., through patenting ), the widespread practice of Planned obsolescence (incl. lack of repairability by design ), and

9828-435: The processes applied when attempting to implement new ideas. Specifically, innovation involves some combination of problem/opportunity identification, the introduction, adoption or modification of new ideas germane to organizational needs, the promotion of these ideas, and the practical implementation of these ideas. Peter Drucker wrote: Innovation is the specific function of entrepreneurship, whether in an existing business,

9936-527: The resources on the earth are indeed limited. Within the confines of Solow's model, this known technology is assumed to be constantly improving. Consequently, the products of this technology (the new capital) are expected to be more productive as well as more valuable. The idea lay dormant for some time perhaps because Dale W. Jorgenson (1966) argued that it was observationally equivalent with disembodied technological progress, as advanced earlier in Solow (1957). It

10044-433: The software tool company Atlassian conducts quarterly "ShipIt Days" in which employees may work on anything related to the company's products. Google employees work on self-directed projects for 20% of their time (known as Innovation Time Off ). Both companies cite these bottom-up processes as major sources for new products and features. An important innovation factor includes customers buying products or using services. As

10152-471: The spread of ideas. He coined the term meme to describe an abstract unit of selection , equivalent to the gene in evolutionary biology . It has been pretended by some, (and in England especially,) that inventors have a natural and exclusive right to their inventions, and not merely for their own lives, but inheritable to their heirs. But while it is a moot question whether the origin of any kind of property

10260-444: The steady state level, on the left side, grow more slowly when compared to countries closer to the vertex of the graph. When countries are to the right of the steady state level, they are not growing because all the returns they create need to go to replacing and repairing their old capital. Since Solow's initial work in the 1950s, many more sophisticated models of economic growth have been proposed, leading to varying conclusions about

10368-497: The time one completed phase 2, one had an invention, but until one got it to the point of having an economic impact, one did not have an innovation. Diffusion was not considered a phase of innovation. Focus at this point in time was on manufacturing. A prime example of innovation involved the boom of Silicon Valley start-ups out of the Stanford Industrial Park . In 1957, dissatisfied employees of Shockley Semiconductor ,

10476-462: The usage of expressions of a work, not an idea. Thus, copyrights have a negative relationship to ideas. Work means a tangible medium of expression. It may be an original or derivative work of art, be it literary, dramatic, musical recitation, artistic, related to sound recording, etc. In (at least) countries adhering to the Berne Convention , copyright automatically starts covering the work upon

10584-514: The users or communities of users can further develop technologies and reinvent their social meaning. One technique for innovating a solution to an identified problem is to actually attempt an experiment with many possible solutions. This technique was famously used by Thomas Edison's laboratory to find a version of the incandescent light bulb economically viable for home use, which involved searching through thousands of possible filament designs before settling on carbonized bamboo. This technique

10692-623: The word idea carries a rather different sense of our modern English term). Plato argued in dialogues such as the Phaedo , Symposium , Republic , and Timaeus that there is a realm of ideas or forms ( eidei ), which exist independently of anyone who may have thoughts on these ideas, and it is the ideas which distinguish mere opinion from knowledge, for unlike material things which are transient and liable to contrary properties, ideas are unchanging and nothing but just what they are. Consequently, Plato seems to assert forcefully that material things can only be

10800-458: Was a founding trustee of the Economists for Peace and Security . Solow's students include Nobel Prize winners Peter Diamond , George Akerlof, Joseph Stiglitz, and William Nordhaus, as well as Michael Rothschild , Halbert White , Charlie Bean , Michael Woodford , and Harvey Wagner . Solow was one of the signees of a 2018 amicus curiae brief that expressed support for Harvard University in

10908-411: Was accepted as a view and understanding of knowledge as impersonal facts which had been accepted by scientists for some 250 years. Peirce contended that we acquire knowledge as participants , not as spectators . He felt "the real", sooner or later, is composed of information that has been acquired through ideas and knowledge and ordered by the application of logical reasoning. The rational distinction of

11016-513: Was an experience in which the human mind apprehended something. In a Lockean view, there are really two types of ideas: complex and simple. Simple ideas are the building blocks for more complex ideas, and "While the mind is wholly passive in the reception of simple ideas, it is very active in the building of complex ideas…" Complex ideas, therefore, can either be modes , substances , or relations . Modes combine simpler ideas in order to convey new information. For instance, David Banach gives

11124-604: Was an American economist and Nobel laureate whose work on the theory of economic growth culminated in the exogenous growth model named after him. He was Institute Professor Emeritus of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology , where he was a professor from 1949 on. He was awarded the John Bates Clark Medal in 1961, the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1987, and

11232-463: Was considered to be the most complete. Crossan and Apaydin built on the definition given in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Oslo Manual: Innovation is production or adoption, assimilation, and exploitation of a value-added novelty in economic and social spheres; renewal and enlargement of products, services, and markets; development of new methods of production; and

11340-497: Was discharged in August 1945. Shortly after returning, he proceeded to marry his girlfriend, Barbara Lewis (died 2014), whom he had been dating for six weeks. Solow returned to Harvard in 1945, and studied under Wassily Leontief . As Leontief's research assistant he produced the first set of capital-coefficients for the input–output model . Then he became interested in statistics and probability models . From 1949 to 1950, he spent

11448-649: Was found to be productivity . Ever since, economic historians have tried to explain the process of innovation itself, rather than assuming that technological inventions and technological progress result in productivity growth. The concept of innovation emerged after the Second World War, mostly thanks to the works of Joseph Schumpeter (1883–1950) who described the economic effects of innovation processes as Constructive destruction . Today, consistent neo-Schumpeterian scholars see innovation not as neutral or apolitical processes. Rather, innovation can be seen as socially constructed processes. Therefore, its conception depends on

11556-497: Was not very fond of the concept. He was skeptical to it both in culture (dancing and art) and in education (he did not believe in introducing new games and toys to the kids). Aristotle (384–322 BCE) did not like organizational innovations: he believed that all possible forms of organization had been discovered. Before the 4th century in Rome, the words novitas and res nova / nova res were used with either negative or positive judgment on

11664-463: Was successfully advanced in subsequent research by Jeremy Greenwood, Zvi Hercowitz and Per Krusell (1997), who argued that the secular decline in capital goods prices could be used to measure embodied technological progress. They labeled the notion investment-specific technological progress . Solow (2001) approved. Both Paul Romer and Robert Lucas, Jr. subsequently developed alternatives to Solow's neoclassical growth model. To better communicate

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