The Research & Innovation Vortex

For the longest time, I have been looking for a simple way of defining innovation and its relationship with research. And finally, I believe that I have found it! Yah!

The genesis of the proposed definition comes from Professor Dario Polli’s post of a quote by Geoffrey Nicholson of 3M and a subsequent interesting exchange between Davide Vercellone and Daniele Casale.

The Nicholson’s quote posted by Professor Polli is: “Research is the transformation of money into knowledge. Innovation is the transformation of knowledge into money”

And the subsequent exchange underlined the perceived dichotomy between measurable and the currently not measurable variables.

In the one case, Roberts (1987) is quoted as defining innovation as the “economic exploitation of an invention”.

While in the other, Edison, Ali, Torkar (2014) are quoted as defining innovation as “…the production or adoption, assimilation, and exploitation of a value-added novelty in economic and social spheres. It is both a process and an outcome”.

However, both of these views can be captured in Nicholson’s definition by substituting the word “value” for the word “money”.

The definition of the word “value” includes not only the meaning of money, but also includes other definitions of value such as time, effort, sweat, passion, care, love, health, safety, community and sustainability to name but a few.

True, some of these definitions of “value” can not be measured with hard data. However, they can be quantified with soft data produced by surveys, interviews, and methods typically used in the social sciences.

Consequently, the modified quote becomes:

“Research is the transformation of value into knowledge. While innovation is the transformation of knowledge into value”

This definition captures not only the strong financial dimension of research and innovation in technology, service and business, but also captures the social dimensions of innovation both in commerce and also in our communities.

Personally, I like this definition of the relationship between innovation and research. I like because it is very circular.

As such, it provides the opportunity to express it in a visual format such as an eddy or a vortex: the “research and innovation vortex”.

"Food for thought!"

Grazie mille Dario, Davide e Daniele!