What is an innovation

Innovation is the introduction of new or improved products, services or processes. Innovations within companies aim to expand business performance. Within , innovations bring new insights and promote their practical application.

What is an easy explanation of innovation?

Innovation means creating something that is new or improved and adds value. It can involve technological advances, new results from or improved methods. Innovations differ from mere ideas in that companies or can implement them in practice and slightly modify them.

Innovations should bring progress and improve the status quo. In academia and science, this often means creating new knowledge, enhancing existing theories or finding practical applications for research results.

Innovations promote economic growth, increase the overall quality of social coexistence and contribute to the solution of global problems.

Companies benefit from innovation by gaining competitive advantages and tapping into new markets. Innovations contribute to sustainable development and can address societal challenges, such as climate change or health crises.

When is an idea innovative?

When it’s new, offers a practical benefit and is successfully realised. In science and academia, this often means that it is based on sound research and produces new findings or applications.

An innovative approach requires ingenuity, critical thinking and the preparedness to take risks. The implementation of innovative ideas often additionally requires interdisciplinary collaboration and access to adequate resources.

Innovation management involves differentiation between two main types of innovation – although both types can also be intertwined in practice:


• Process innovation: optimises the operational flows within a company or research institution, reduces costs or improves quality, such as via the automation of production sequences or by means of new AI processes for data analysis.


• Product innovation: develops new or improved products, such as technologies, materials or functions like new medications or research equipment.


Significant innovations in the course of science and academia


• The steam engine accelerated the Industrial Revolution in the 18th century.


• The telegraph revolutionised communication over long distances in the 19th century.


• The theory of relativity modified our understanding of space and time in the early 20th century.


• From the start of the 20th century, quantum mechanics began to describe the physical laws of matter.


• Discovery of the structure of DNA in the 1950s laid the foundation stone for our understanding of genetics.


• The internet fundamentally altered global communications and the dissemination of information from the 1960s onwards.

How are innovations conceived?

Innovations emerge whenever

- the necessary financing

- the infrastructure and

- access to resources and to networks are available. 


Innovations such as new products generally pass through a multi-stage process from idea to market launch. This includes generation of the idea, , prototyping and testing through to market launch. An innovation management department is generally responsible for this process within companies.