Innovation refers to the "creation of better or more effective products, processes, technologies, or ideas that affect markets, governments, and society and generally signifies a substantial positive rather than incremental change.” This definition is from WikipediA, generally accepted to be as good an encyclopedic reference  source as any, and itself the remarkable product of a type of innovation process increasingly being referred to as “Open”. But I get ahead of myself, more on the notion of "open Innovation" later.

Three things are noteworthy from WikipediA’s definition of Innovation:

i) Innovation is not necessarily about technology. We often tend to casually associate innovation with technology itself, or arising from the effects of technology because information technology has had such a dramatic and visible transformational effect on individuals, business and society in the past two decades. However an innovation can be completely devoid of technology. Case in point, the Jamaica Debt Exchange (JDX) Programme might be considered a financial innovation that was able to yield interest savings to the Government of Jamaica estimated at upwards of $40.0 billion 

ii) The impact of an innovation goes well beyond incremental improvement and involves radical change or transformation. iii) Innovations more often than not, have their genesis in ideas, but an idea only becomes an innovation in its application or execution resulting in tangible benefits to society.

iii) Innovations more often than not, have their genesis in ideas, but an idea only becomes an innovation in its applicationor execution resulting in tangible benefits to society.

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About the Author

Maurice L McNaughton

Maurice McNaughton is the Director of the Centre of Excellence for IT Innovation at Mona School of Business & Management, UWI.

Dr. McNaughton is Director of the Centre of Excellence for IT-enabled Innovation at the Mona School of Business & Management and is currently doing active research in the areas of Open Source Software, Open/Big Data and Mobile Computing. He is a founding member of the Caribbean Open Institute, a regional coalition of Caribbean organizations that engages and works with regional governments, researchers, journalists, technologists, NGOs, and academics, to raise awareness, strengthen capacity, and foster collaborations towards the adoption of open development approaches.