Preface

“Innovation” has become a familiar dictum of everyday speech. Opening any magazine, you will find with considerable reliability a mention of something innovative on almost every page. Listening to any speech in business or politics, you will certainly also be told about innovations that should be taken into account. Obviously, this word has become a ubiquitous wild card for authors, journalists, politicians, or managers to explain their statements. However, the meaning of this term has become more and more extended and arbitrary, so that virtually everything seems to be innovative—but not really new, any more. Here, a scientific basis would be helpful in order to manage innovations in a thorough way.

When told about an innovation, most people expect a new idea with a remarkable effect. And many of them may discern a new opportunity for business. In fact, an innovation is always both, that is, a technical as well as a commercial achievement by people and enterprises. Therefore, expertise from engineering and management has to be combined in a comprehensive way to innovate.

A common error about innovations is related to the assumption that just one single good idea is needed in order to create something new. Many people dream about instantaneous success through one sole idea—followed by enduring personal wealth. However, experience tells us that considerable efforts and resources are required in order to achieve an innovation. A never-ending steady flow of consequent ideas is required to adapt and extend a very first notion before it can finally develop into an accomplished innovation. The creation of innovations needs a somewhat scientific culture of technical skills and of managerial persistence. In particular, an application of a scientific procedure is what makes the difference between a lucky coincidence and a professional achievement in innovation management.

Another common misunderstanding of innovations concerns their relation to truth. Logically, something genuinely new must be initially outside of reality. Otherwise, that is, as an already existing part of reality, it could hardly be called really new. Therefore, innovations have to begin as merely expectations or requests, promises or pure fantasy. And consequently the management of innovations is primarily about imaginary things that seem to be theoretically reasonable but not yet scientifically grounded in facts.

First of all, it seems reasonable to develop an invention as a solution for an occurring problem. Secondly, it also seems to be somehow reasonable to begin research again on the existing solutions for hidden problems in order to come up with other inventions. Thirdly, it even seems rather reasonable to do research on future problems as well as to anticipate potential solutions for them. And finally, even the assumption seems to be reasonable that there is a real human desire to recreate the world by the mere action of one’s own imagination.

Obviously, to strive for innovations is an act of considerable complexity. Therefore, a scientific base becomes helpful to manage the related projects, the marketing, and the required inventions.