About Invention and innovation: An introduction

This unit is for designers, engineers, technologists and anyone interested in designing and inventing. It is also for managers and consumers interested in innovation and technical change. The unit will show you how design and innovation can create a more sustainable future. It will also help you understand how innovation comes about and will encourage thinking about environmental and social challenges for the future. On completion of this unit, you should be able to: explain invention, design, innovation and diffusion as ongoing processes with a range of factors affecting success at each stage; explain how particular products you use have a history of invention and improvement, and appreciate the role that you and your family, as consumers, have played in this history; define key concepts such as invention, design, innovation, diffusion, product champion, entrepreneur, sustaining and disruptive innovation; explain the role of intellectual property in invention and innovation and list the various ways that inventors can protect their ideas; identify the range of reasons that motivate individuals and organisations to invent; explain the creative process by which individuals come up with ideas for new designs and inventions; explain the technology push, market pull, and coupling models of the innovation process and decide how well they offer a satisfactory explanation of the innovation process; identify and discuss the technical, financial and organisational obstacles that have to be overcome to bring an invention to the market; discuss the importance of choosing an appropriate design, materials and manufacturing process for a particular new product; explain the factors that influence how well an innovation will sell and how rapidly it is likely to diffuse into the market; give examples of disruptive innovations that can introduce a new way of operating in a particular industry, that can challenge existing companies and that can open up new markets for innovative products.