The classic definitions of innovation include:
- the process of making changes to something established by introducing something new
- the act of introducing something new: something newly introduced (The American Heritage Dictionary).
- the introduction of something new. (Merriam-Webster Online)
- a new idea, method or device. (Merriam-Webster Online)
- the successful exploitation of new ideas (Dept of Trade and Industry, UK).
- change that creates a new dimension of performance Peter Drucker (Hesselbein, 2002)
Often, in common parlance, the words creativity and innovation are used interchangeably. They shouldn't be, because while creativity implies coming up with ideas, it's the "bringing ideas to life" . . . that makes innovation the distinct undertaking it is. "Innovation, like many business functions, is a management process that requires specific tools, rules, and discipline.
Types of innovation: business model, marketing, organizational, process, product, service, and supply chain.
Distuptive Innovation:
A disruptive technology is a new technological innovation, product, or service that eventually overturns the existing dominant technology or product in the market. Disruptive innovations can be broadly classified into lower-end and new-market disruptive innovations. A new-market disruptive innovation is often aimed at non-consumption, whereas a lower-end disruptive innovation is aimed at main stream customers who were ignored by established companies.
A disruptive technology comes to dominate an existing market by either filling a role in a new market that the older technology could not fill (as more expensive, lower capacity but smaller-sized hard disks did for newly developed notebook computers in the 1980s) or by successively moving up-market through performance improvements until finally displacing the market incumbents (as digital photography has begun to replace film photography).
Disruptive technologies are not disruptive to customers, and often take a long time before they are significantly disruptive to established companies. They are often difficult to recognize. Indeed, as Christensen points out and studies have shown, it is often entirely rational for incumbent companies to ignore disruptive innovations, since they compare so badly with existing technologies or products, and the deceptively small market available for a disruptive innovation is often very small compared to the market for the established technology. Even if a disruptive innovation is recognized, existing businesses are often reluctant to take advantage of it, since it would involve competing with their existing (and more profitable) technological approach. Christensen recommends that existing firms watch for these innovations, invest in small firms that might adopt these innovations, and continue to push technological demands in their core market so that performance stays above what disruptive technologies can achieve.
RSS as Innovation:
The purpose of advanced technology development [is] to sustain established trajectories of performance improvement..." RSS has been widely adopted in several sizeable markets (e.g., weblogs, news syndication, corporate portals) and these markets will continue to demand improvements. From the perspective of established RSS markets, these will be sustaining improvements. However, it is likely that many of these improvements will address requirements of unrelated markets—say, for example, university library systems. From the perspective of unrelated markets, these will be disruptive improvements; that is, "all of a sudden", RSS will become an attractive alternative to existing solutions.
Notes adapted from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Innovation