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Innovation has been a buzzword since at least the early 1990s. A Wall Street Journal article published earlier this year bemoaned the more recent overuse of the word, citing its appearance in product descriptions by soup makers, bubble-wrap manufacturers, and dried cranberry producers among more than 33,000 companies whose 2011 quarterly and annual reports featured the word. Such ubiquitous usage may be diluting the very meaning of innovation. But as the global economy searches for ways out of its current morass, the word is again fresh on many lips—innovation economy, innovation strategies, innovation officers, and the foreboding-sounding innovation gap.
With The Scientist’s fifth installment of our annual Top 10 Innovations competition we refocus on the core meaning of “innovation”—to whit: a new idea, method, or ...
