Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

Technological innovations are commercialized inventions, where inventions refer to the development of a new idea or an act of creation ( Hitt, Hoskisson, and Nixon, 1993 ). Innovations can take the form of new products, new uses for existing products, and new devices, designs, services, methods of production, or systems of arrangements. Technological innovations can thus come in many different forms: a new computer chip (device), a new ergonomic design for chairs (design), allowing for issue of electronic air‐tickets through Internet websites (service), a new desalination technology to obtain fresh water (methods of production), and a new arrangement of the production line that improves quality control (system of arrangements). Because innovations are end products of successful inventions, the two constructs (“innovations” and “inventions”) are often perceived to be synonymous. However, one should recognize that the same invention could be commercialized in different forms, hence appearing as different innovations. For example, a new invention in the art of coffee‐making can be embodied in the form of a new coffee‐maker machine that incorporates this new principle, or it can be a new procedure for making the coffee – a specific and explicit method of combining coffee beans and hot water, leading to the transformation of such raw materials into the beverage, without a specific product ... log in or subscribe to read full text