TABLE OF CONTENTS Inventions occur when preparation meets opportunity. In the substantial literature on invention and innovation the distinction between these two aspects of generating new ideas has somehow become blurred. There is merit in regarding innovation as a gradual change of an existing paradigm of some artefact or process, whereas inventions are usually associated with some step change in technology, often related to the introduction of a new paradigm for an artefact, material or process. There is also some vague distinction associated with the scale of impact an innovation or an invention might have on the economy. [2.3]
Innovations may be incremental, or step changes or somewhere in between, often associated with relatively shorter-term changes in the technical realisation and exploitation of the invention. Although these distinctions may be economically meaningful, they are less than helpful in assessing the relative creative effort involved in either of these two creative processes. Paraphrasing the words attributed to Thomas Edison, often the invention is the brilliant flash of insight ( the 1% inspiration) followed by the considerable greater creative effort of the longer term exploitation of the invention through innovation ( the 99% perspiration).
Often the invention is a result of some recognised need such as the telephone or the wireless ( market pull) as opposed to the innovation needed for exploiting some new technology such as the computer chip ( technology push). As an interesting and perhaps instructive example, consider the invention of flight and,...
