Differentiating Innovation from Invention and case studies

Innovation and Invention

 

“Invention is neither necessary nor sufficient for Innovation” a quote from Henry Chesbrough, the man who coined the term Open Innovation.

 

Innovation and invention

People think they are interchangeable terms, but they differ completely from one another.

Both terms relate to the creation or development of something their meanings deviate further and further from one another as the business industry develops.

 

Innovation vs Invention

We define innovation as the process of bring invention, i.e. ideas, approaches and technologies to customers as products and services.

You can read my article on Innovation, which is a more in-depth take into the topic is available to read here.

Invention is the action of conducting and creating breakthrough ideas.

It does not focus on solving a particular problem, but only to increase the knowledge domain further.

These inventions are valued assets and hence get patented and protected.

 

How are they different from one another

An invention is a hypothesis or theory that itself has no value to offer.

Inventions are not solitary solutions, in fact some invention may not even have any practical implications in the real world!

“Innovation is the commercialization of inventions” is another quote from Professor Chesbrough, which effectively summarizes the relationship between innovation and invention.

We can think innovation of as a conglomeration of several inventions that work together in a product or service which then adds value to the society by solving a specific problem faced by a community of people.

Let’s discuss a few examples to better understand how innovation and invention go hand in hand in business and entrepreneurship.

 

Case Study on innovation and invention

There is a great article on innovation and invention by wired which you can read here.

In the article, it provides a case study on the iPhone. We proclaim it as the greatest innovation of all times.

Let us do an evaluation of this case study.

iPhone is a collection of hundreds if not thousand of ground-breaking inventions.

Most of these inventions came out years and some even decades before Apple realised the iPhone.

One of these inventions that defined the iPhone was the invention of the transistor in the infamous Bell laboratories in 1947. 

This over decades of innovation led to the development of the SoC (System on a Chip) that now powers everything from our smartphones, security camera, smartwatches, wireless headphones, thermostats, All tech products, all of them have some level of SoC incorporated in them.

Bell Labs with all its scientists and capital took over a decade to develop a practical application for the transistor.

So inventions are worthless without innovators.

Here is another one of my favorite stores about how Corning a glass making company by trade innovated and developed the ultra-thin and durable glass used in smartphones today.

The story goes Corning was experimenting with highly flexible yet durable glasses for years when Steve Jobs, co-founder and CEO of Apple came in to visit the then CEO of Corning, Wendell Weeks and demanded that he mass produce a glass that Corning hadn’t even created yet!

I see this a great example of the co-relation that exists between innovation and invention, this is an extremely rare case of when a demand in innovation led to some invention, but this is becoming more and more common in the industry and the demand for products and innovation is increasing exponentially but there are not enough invention to sustain the growth.

Companies have a clearer view of what they expect from their products and it is very easy for them to go to places there the actual inventions are happening such as Universities, research labs, institutions and say “Here is my problem, if you can invent a solution, here’s my money”.

So, who are these people anyway?

 

Who is an Innovator?

We are Human Beings too! Haha! just kidding (we are here to help…)

Innovators are the people who connect the invention seeds/ideas together into something that has demand in the market.

On the flip-side.

Inventors are people in research, they are not interested in making profit. Obsessed with creating knowledge in their own respective fields.

 

Conclusion

At the end, Innovation has become a conventional term that implies really much broader terms like invention, discovery, development and so forth. Hope this article helped you to have a better understanding of the two-terms and its implications.

Differentiating Innovation from Invention and case studies | Krityatirtha Paul