![URBAN AND REGIONAL INNOVATION Research - URENIO](http://www.urenio.org/wp-content/uploads/images/urenio.png")
According to the National Innovation Initiative (NII), Innovation will be the single most important factor in determining America’s success through the 21st century. The NII defines innovation as the intersection of invention and insight, leading to the creation of social and economic value.
The conference ‘Promoting Innovation and Competitiveness: A Transatlantic Dialogue’ took place at 28 April in the Hague, the Netherlands. The main aim of the conference was to increase synergies across the Atlantic to boost the competitiveness of both economies and to spur dynamism between both innovation ecosystems.
The fourth Community Innovation Survey made available data on innovation in the service sector. This opened the way to extending research into comparing innovativeness in the service and the manufacturing sectors.
Paul Schumann, editor and publisher of the Innovation Road Map describes the linguistic origins of innovation, creativity and ingenuity:
“Innovation, innovate, innovator, innovant, innovative, innovatory, renovate, novation, these are but a few forms of the central concept within innovation – nova. Nova is Latin but it originates from the Indo-European neuos. Neuos meant new or now…….
In 2004, IBM conducted a worldwide study on innovation, the Global Innovation Outlook, and one of the key findings on the changing nature of innovation in the 21st century is that it requires wider collaboration across disciplines and specialties. In fact, the study concluded, among other things, that “combinations of technologies, expertise, business models and policies will now drive innovation.”
In a recent McKinsey Global Survey of Business Executives, IT and business executives agree that technological innovation, emerging economies, and offshore manufacturing are the three most important global business trends. But tech executives are more bullish about what innovation will contribute to their company’s profitability. Since they expect growth to come primarily through the improvement of current products, they emphasize new-product development less than business executives do.
Philippe Aghion, Mathias Dewatripont, and Jeremy C. Stein developed a model that clarifies the respective advantages and disadvantages of academic and private-sector research. The fundamental tradeoff between academia and the private sector is one of creative control versus focus.