Again, my goal is not too come up with a detailed or philosophical definition of innovation, but I'd like to affirm a general enough construct that can be used to show it's positive and negative consequences within a business climate. I'll start with definitions of creativity and invention to set the foundation for a definition of innovation. Note that these definitions are very generic, since I believe the concepts should apply to many different areas of human discourse including business.

Creativity: establishing or extending the current domain of 'whatever' or generating new combinations of entities within the existing domain of 'whatever'. This really means coming up with new ideas or discoveries others have not thought of (that we know about).

Invention: creating a new thing, a new process or new use of a thing or process. While invention involves creativity, the creativity is specifically relegated to physical things, processes or intended uses of the things and processes.

Innovation: the exploitation of an invention or creative idea for a gain in a specific value - whether the value is relegated to business, social, intellectual, educational, political, spiritual, or 'other' endeavors.

So, how is this definition of innovation applied to the business of product development?

We can get some direction from business guru, Peter Drucker, who has various thoughts about innovation that are still very meaningful today in the business sense.

Innovation is:

"…change that creates a new dimension of performance."
"…knowledge applied to tasks that are new and different…"
"…organized, systematic, rational work."
"…the specific instrument of entrepreneurship."
"…the act that endows resources with a new capacity to create wealth."