Diffusion of innovations and the importance of education
Innovation almost always has positive connotations. We may associate it with technological development, but the reality is that innovation can refer to many other things: products, processes, services, art, business models, etc., that innovators bring to markets, governments or society.
Innovation is related to invention, but it’s not necessarily the same thing, tending to have more to do with the practical implementation of an invention to achieve some kind of significant impact on a market or society. In historical terms, invention is often far removed from innovation: many inventions are ignored for decades until an innovator comes up with a way to turn it into an attractive value proposition.
Generally, the process works like this: the inventor invents something, and the innovator, who doesn’t have to be the same person, finds a market for it. We tend to associate this with patents, which grant the inventor exclusive rights, such as excluding the ability of third parties to manufacture, use, sell, or commercially exploit that invention for a specified period of time in exchange for sufficiently detailed disclosure of that invention. But in reality, registering a patent does not always correctly reflect the authorship or merit of an invention, and there are many cases throughout history where patents have been used to…
