Innovation is a catchword like ergonomic or sustainable. Everyone wants to be associated with innovation; and everyone has a different definition for it.
I believe that the technical definition goes something like this: the incremental improvement of a product, idea, or process such that it becomes more valuable.
Often I think people allow invention and innovation to be interchangeable, but they are not. The Wright brothers invented the airplane. It did not exist before they created it. Ford invented the assembly line, but he innovated manual labor processes. The car existed before ford built the model T, but it was made affordable by mass production and the assembly line.
I am reminded of the advertising campaign of BASF; we dont make (product x), we make it (faster, stronger, smaller). that is innovation. And it really is what the design process is all about. We research so we know what exists already and then we create new things often based on the creations of the past. We innovate.
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