Definition of innovation

In the Health and Well-being Cluster Programme, innovations can be aimed at a combination of wellbeing technology and services so that new business opportunities can be created. For example, making of social and health services more efficient with the help of new innovative technologies may be one way to create new markets for commercial enterprises. In the same way, utilization of IT applications in diagnostics can open new markets to enterprises in this field.

According to Tekes, innovation is information and expertise which is utilized commercially or socially in a novel way. In other words, innovation is an idea, a piece of information or invention utilized commercially or socially. An idea, piece of information or invention is not merely an innovation!

Everett Rogers (2003) has defined innovation as ideas, practices, or objects that are perceived as new by an individual. The innovation does not need to be brand-new, it is only essential that the client views it as new. Ideas, practices, or objects that of which an individual has been aware but of which he has not considered in that light, can also be called an innovation.

Sometimes, innovation activity is incorrectly confused with research activity. However, a pure research result is not an innovation unless it can be commercially exploited. In simplified terms, a research process converts money into information and innovation process converts information into money.