How to Tell an Invention from an Innovation and Why You Should Know
posted by Eleanor Wynn on May 08, 2007
People over-use the term innovation. I know because I got “the word” from an evolutionary biologist named David Krakauer at the Santa Fe Institute Business Network meeting on Innovation in nature and in organizations in June of ’05.
Since that time I tend to notice when people claim that a large percentage of “innovations” “fail”. I have to disagree.
In Krakauer’s definition, an innovation is something that has already succeeded. On the other hand, invention is the production of mutations, novelties, changes. Most of these in fact do fail. But they are the raw materials of innovation. Without invention, there would be no innovation. It is absurd to think that a high percentage of inventions should succeed.
Invention
Invention is a process that is random, one-off and situational. Inventions can easily occur “before their time”—before receptive conditions exist; or they can come “too late”—after some possibly less productive invention has already established itself as an innovation. Inventions often need co-evolution with other inventions, in order to really create and sustain a niche.
Innovation
Once it has a niche in a system, it is an innovation. Once it is an innovation, by that definition, it has already succeeded. So, innovations can’t really fail, at least until some other innovation replaces them. What can fail are inventions, and they are supposed to. Mutation in nature is random, on the chance that if enough is produced, something will stick. In order to come up with some mutation that will stick, there have to be an awful lot of inventions.
Co-evolution, part of innovation
Co-evolution happens when two or more inventions are more or less concurrent. Either they are competing for a niche or they complement each other. Either way, they benefit from co-evolution, whether through competition that forces mutual fitness or through complementarity that makes each one more complete. A major case in point is the World Wide Web. Arpanet existed as early as the sixties. It was used by the Department of Defense and universities doing defense-related work and computer science (which was seen as a defense asset). The network was there, TC/PIP was there, text was there, along with other protocols and inventions that I expect my audience to fill in. What was missing was the widespread infrastructure (Al Gore DID promote that), the bandwidth and network speeds, and the graphics that both needed these speeds and enticed large numbers of users. Slow modems and slow computers were forced out of their niches by the graphic world-wide web. The latter combination of inventions made it seem as if the Internet suddenly sprang up out of nowhere and took off exponentially from there. It did take off exponentially; that is called a non-linear effect in a complex system; and a complex system is a set of interacting variables that creates emergent outcomes. But it took off from SOMEWHERE—a collection of co-evolved inventions.
People expect too much of Established Innovation Centers
Yet whenever I run across an “innovation” maven, say somebody with an institute or department with such a label, I have a very hard time getting this point of science across. If you have a distinction between invention and innovation, you will never complain about how many innovations “fail”. There is no way for all or even most inventions to be “successful”—that would mean there was too little experimentation. So, if you are inventing, give yourself a pat on the back as you are the foundation for innovation, whether or not your particular inventions appear to be succeeding. You are the medium and environment, the atmosphere without which no innovations would ever happen.
Why you should know: try using metrics more like nature’s
Why should you know? Because if you are involved in an “innovation” group of some kind and have a high bar for how much of your output will go into a pipeline, you are setting yourself up for failure, according to the laws of nature. You might want to lower the bar, or set another gate in your process where inventions get counted as raw material, but they are not expected to become innovations in very large numbers. You will be fantastically successful if you get a few. That does not mean there should be no innovation groups. Without them, you will likely get none. The other point is that in fact there should be prolific invention to increase the chances that co-evolution will occur. We have seen some of this at Intel IT Research. People working on different topics, from infrastructure to design to demographics can all converge on a set of new ideas that together add up to an innovation. Alone, each would have been less likely to succeed. Ecosystems are not always ready to embrace innovations with open arms, after all! They have to prove out, co-occur, be just-in-time and be able to push out some existing niche-holder or create a new niche.
Summary
The following should be a table but it is not showing up as one:
Invention vs. Innovation
Invention:
Is any mutation or novelty; At any level of change, e.g. superficial or species-defining; Impact on species or ecosystem can be small or great; Happens all the time; Some match a need in the system; Some are anomalies; They can fail or succeed.
Innovation:
Is an invention that impacts an ecosystem; Changes niches by pushing out old species; Creates new niches; Changes the dynamic of the ecosystem; Links to other species in ecosystem; Becomes established, viable.
Thomas Alva Edison - The Failed Inventions Not everything Thomas Alva Edison created was a success - Edison also had a few failures - after all he did hold 1093 patents for different inventions.
Albert Einstein: “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson: “Men [sic—he means “folks”] love to wonder, and that is the seed of science.”
Isaac Asimov: “The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not Eureka! but That’s funny…”
Comments (8)
tagged: asimov, co-evolution, ecosystem, edison, innovation, invention, nature, SantaFeInstitute
Comments
May 09 | Michael Molin said:
Invention means what is natural (for Nature and as a part of it - a subject of physics) but has not yet known or used by people - wheel, plane etc. Innovation is just a research process to the invention and is a new way of using the known things - the artificial combinations of inventions so they are not stable and fruitful unless they are not inventions. Invention is a real result that works.
May 09 | Eleanor Wynn said:
Michael, I agree with part of your comment. To say that innovation is a process rather than a result is interesting. Thank you for that point. I was sticking with Krakauer’s distinctions. But invention occurs both in nature and in people. The point is that we need to differentiate between the production of inventions and the establishment of innovations in an ecosystem, and Krakauer provided a nice vocabulary for that. Thanks for commenting!
May 09 | Michael Molin said:
Thanks, Eleonor. Yes, the establishment of innovations in an ecosystem is a step-by-step process of practical application of inventions or the results of scientific discoveries. And this technology progress is the cultural phenomenon of evolution.
May 09 | Eleanor Wynn said:
Hello again, Michael. I am not sure I equate evolution with “progress” since that would be putting a value on it (otherwise known as “positivism”). However, I do think innovation in nature and in society are adaptive. The question is, can we adapt fast enough or in the right way? That is, the way that would make us continually adaptive rather than box ourselves in to an obsolescent model? see my blog on Fixity and Control. Thanks again for your comments.
May 15 | Karthikeyan Iyer said:
Going by the pure sense conveyed by the words, innovate is “to make new” with a hidden connotation “of something old”, whereas invent is to create something new. I believe “innovation” is closely linked to a function and invent is closely linked to an object. For example, the washing function was innovated by inventing a washing machine. You could innovate without needing to invent, if you use an existing object to perform a function in a new way. For example innovation of exercise by performing exercise under water. You could have a pure invention, which doesnt innovate any function (maybe create a brand new function) say a telescope. Or you could have both - innovation of a function through one or more inventions (say long distance communication innovated by inventing the microphone and the transmission line) or an invention serving multiple innovations (say invention of paper innovated written communication as well as packing).
The definition of innovation/invention should really be independent of the so called commercial factor or even the success factor. How much or how well an innovation is accepted by the general public may be a criteria to rate innovations/inventions but not to define innovatio/invention itself. I tend to believe that we can have innovations or inventions that are commercial failures or social failures (in terms of non-acceptance by the general public). We cannot have failed inventions or innovations in a functional sense because they would be eligible for qualification as inventions or innovations only when they meet their intended functions.
May 15 | Eleanor Wynn said:
Karthik, a thoughtful response indeed. I would only disagree with your point that there are no failed inventions. There are many many inventions that do not fit into an ecosystem and therefore change the system, nor are they ever used. These would definitely be inventions, or “new” objects as you say. But they would not be innovations. I think there is some interesting discussion in the comments about process. Whether invention or innovation are processes, I have to think more about this. Thank you for commenting.
May 22 | Navneet Bhushan said:
Well, Invention as a pre-requisite for Innovation is in my opinion only one of the elements from where Innovations can spring - How about using Innovation: Successful Exploitation of (New/Old) Ideas! As soon as you take it back inside the mind (ideas need not be expressed - they can remain in mind) I think Innovation has four parts - Uniqueness of either (a) Idea itself (b) the unique way it has been implemented (c) the unique context in which it has been implemented and finally (d) the unique results it has produced. Innovation may have any or all of these phases.
About Invention : well Patent Offices define an Invention as : Novel, Non-obvious to a person skilled in art and Useful (having Industrial application). One can see it has all ingredients to make it close to Innovation however Innovation need not be because of Invention. One example, Central Limit Theorem and Statistical Process Control was in vogue, known, used etc for Industrial process controls, however the way Motorola took it to extreme (the six sigma levels) and then the way GE took it into their DNA and making it world DNA should be considered Innovation - however there is no Invention in what Motoral and GE did. In fact, SPC became Six Sigma due to Innovation by GE built on the Innovation by Motorola…
My two cents :) Navneet
Jul 28 | Trond Johannessen said:
Hi Eleanor, always interesting to read your blog. I found John Kao’s definition of innovation inspiring: “The capability of continuously realizing a desired future state”. Krisztina Holly at USC has a related definition: “the process of translating new ideas into tangible societal impact”. Process is useless without an objective. I am struck by Holly’s definition as it clearly defines innovation as a macro process, and so provides for another dimension of distinction between innovation and invention, the latter being a micro process. Due to the nature of the inventing, invention is not sustainable at the micro level, as failure is an inevitable outcome in most individual attempts. And yet, when pursued on a large scale, the community of inventors produce enough successes to contribute materially, but not exclusively, in sustaining the macro process of innovation that contributes to the achievement of our goals as a society. What I find fascinating is that we so critically depend on constant failure at the micro level for success on the micro level. The implications for companies, organizations, governments are fascinating. How do we motivate the individual inventor to keep going in the face of failure? What organizations do we need to succeed? Who (what skills and perspective) should lead the metaprocesses? How far should we take competition (between individuals, firms, nations, federations), and when should collaboration, incubation and subsidies be applied? I look forward to continue reading your blog.
Trond