It’s interesting to read your company’s blog and see that our ideas do align on innovation being about instigating change rather than simply the act of creating novel ideas. Interestingly though, you seem to draw less of a distinction between the skillsets required for the two tasks, grouping both under your ‘innovation’ heading.

On the other hand, I absolutely agree that the word innovation is increasingly used to refer to a plethora of different ideas and concepts (our slightly differing definitions being but one example of that), and that it’s useful to take stock and try to clarify the situation wherever possible. Obviously in your world of legal contracts, this is especially important!

Great blog too – one I’ll enjoy keeping an eye on, especially with its Australian angle on things. A shame you don’t have an RSS feed for it (or is there one that I didn’t find?)

Cheers,
Andrew

Your post is on what I regard to be a vital point. Congratulations on emphasising that there is an issue. In a nutshell, the term innovation is best understood by also defining the environment of terms that overlap or relat to it. A short blog comment space is not the place to launch into the depth of discussion that proper definition of the word requires.

What has worked for me over the years has been to develop and refine regularly a personal dictionary of terms relevant to IP and innovation etc.

As an IP lawyer I’ve spent 20 years refining definitions of words and the contexts in which they are used. My need has been practical and commercial – to draft better and more meaningful contracts that can guide the behaviour of the parties.

Last week I made public for comment at lightbulb (my firm’s blog on commercialisation) short definitions for three terms – entrepreneurship, commercialisation and innovation. The post is at http://www.dilanchian.com.au/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=47&Itemid=36

Unfortunately the term “innovation” is now usually used to refer to a basket of ideas so great in their quantity as to make the word not that useful. It’s like Western politician who now use the words “democracy” or “freedom”. Quite meaningless really without appropriate definition within a wider context of ideas and plenty of discussion. From this light can be seen at the end of the tunnel.

Cheers

Noric Dilanchian