http://www.innovation-creativity.com/incremental-innovation.html Incremental innovation (sometimes referred to as sustaining innovation) uses existing forms or technologies as a starting point.

It either makes incremental improvements to something or some process or it reconfigures it so that it may serve some other purpose.
Leading the revolution How to thrive in turbulent times by making innovation a way of life he provides a good example "Gillette used to make razors with a single blade. Later, one of its diligent students of stubble asked, Wouldnt two blades be better than one? Thus was born the Trac II. Next came guess what? a razor with three blades the Mach III. I love Gillette razors use one every morning."

(Photo Credit Mr. T in DC) Other good examples include the: Apple iPod. The original iPod came in just white, and enabled you to store and play your mp3 music collection only. Incremental improvements have occurred over time so that today you can buy them in many different colours; store your family photographs and even your video collection. Global Positioning Satellite. These are now common place in motor vehicles to assist drivers in getting from A to B. GPS systems in cars are an example of an incremental innovation in which something that already exists has just been reconfigured to another use. Intel Pentium Processors. Intel introduced the Pentium 4 computer processor chip as an incremental improvement to the Pentium 3 chip. Both chips had the same basic technology but the Pentium 4 introduced new design improvements and additional features to improve the chips overall performance.

Motor vehicles. The cars of twenty or thirty years back and beyond could be thought of as quite basic when compared to the cars of today. Incremental improvements have occurred over time so that its common to expect a modern day car to include electric windows, ABS breaks, air bags, cup holders and the list goes on. Making incremental improvements is important for extending the marketable life of a product or service.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Innovation Innovation is the creation of better or more effective products, processes, services, technologies, or ideas that are accepted by markets, governments, and society. Innovation differs from invention in that innovation refers to the use of a new idea or method, whereas invention refers more directly to the creation of the idea or method itself.

http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Incremental+innovation innovation In technology, an improvement to something already existing. Distinguishing an element of novelty in an invention remains a concern of patent law. The Renaissance was a period of unusual innovation: Leonardo da Vinci produced ingenious designs for submarines, airplanes, and helicopters and drawings of elaborate trains of gears and of the patterns of flow in liquids. Technology provided science with instruments that greatly enhanced its powers, such as Galileo's telescope. New sciences have also contributed to technology, as in the theoretical preparation for the invention of the steam engine. In the 20th century, innovations in semiconductor technology increased the performance and decreased the cost of electronic materials and devices by a factor of a million, an achievement unparalleled in the history of any technology.

For more information on innovation, visit Britannica.com. Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. Copyright 1994-2008 Encyclopdia Britannica, Inc.

Warning! The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased. Innovation the manifestation of something new in constructive human activity, an expression of human creative capabilities in labor.

Socialism opens the way to the free manifestation of human creative capabilities and talents and to innovation on a mass scale. The awareness that they work for themselves and their society and not for exploiters inspires the working people with labor enthusiasm; it encourages their effort for innovation, their creative initiative, and mass socialist emulation (Programma KPSS, 1973, p. 15).

Labor innovation has enormous socioeconomic importance as an inexhaustible source of increased labor productivity and accelerated scientific and technical progress. It is a source of socialist emulation, particularly of its highest form, namely, the movement for a communist attitude toward labor. Innovation stimulates an increase in the cultural and technical sophistication of the working people and a rise in their qualifications.

Innovation plays an important part in strengthening the ties between science and production, and it presupposes the active application of all theoretical and practical knowledge developed in any given field and in all related fields. Innovation provides the material from which new theoretical knowledge is worked out and promotes the development of science, technology, and production.

The history of innovation in Soviet industry is inseparably linked to the emergence of the shock worker movement. During the first five-year plans, efficiency brigades and technical independence brigades sought to master new types of production that would make possible a reduction in the import of industrial goods and a speedup in technical reequipment of enterprises. An important stage in the development of innovation is associated with the name of A. Stakhanov. The Stakhanovite movement of 1935 brought with it a new way of organizing labor that included streamlined production processes, correct distribution of labor in production, freeing of skilled workers from lower-level jobs, and improved shop organization. During the Great Patriotic War of 194145 and the early postwar years, the innovator-expert (novatorskorostnik) movement was very important.

Socialist innovation is currently developing under conditions of the scientific and technological revolution, the enormous transforming influence of which develops the workers creativity. The initiatives toward innovation taken during the 1960s and 1970s have been increasingly characterized by collectivism, as when innovation is expressed in patriotic initiatives taken by labor collectives of enterprises and entire national economic sectors, as well as by cities, oblasts, and republics. Among the initiatives that have become widespread in recent years are those taken by the Saratov machine-building workers to turn out defect-free products (1963), by the workers of Sverdlovsk and Rybinsk to introduce scientific organization of labor (1967), and by the workers of the West Siberian Metallurgical Plant to achieve planned capacities ahead of schedule (1968). Mass technical innovation, invention, and enhanced efficiency represent powerful levers for further raising social productivity in industry, agriculture, construction, transportation, and services.

The creative initiative of the working people has given rise to such new forms for the organization and development of innovation as councils of innovators, public design and production engineering bureaus, and comprehensive complex brigades that are now common at enterprises. The All-Union Society of Inventors and Rationalizers, which had more than 6.5 million members in 1973, does much to develop the movement toward innovation. Along with scientists and engineering and technical personnel, many worker-innovators take an active part in the work of scientific and technical societies. Developing innovation and the mass technical creativity of the working people is an important task of all economic organs and of trade union and Komsomol organizations. Organizational and ideological work by the CPSU is of decisive importance in the development of innovation. The party is constantly exhorting the masses to active creative work and struggling to establish within the collective an atmosphere of creativity and of intolerance for conservatism and stagnation. This is one of the main sources of the strength of socialist innovation.

http://innovaders.com/innovation/general.htm ABSTRACT:

Definition of Innovation: 'The adoption of ideas that is new to the adopting organization'. Innovation can also be defined as brinning invention successful to market and capitalize on it.

A new product is defined by: The cost is lower, its attributes are improved or new, or it newer existed in that market before.

The process cannot be separated from a firm's strategic and competitive context.

2 types of innovation:

Technical Innovation: Improved products, services or processes or completely new once (may require Administrative innovation).

Administrative Innovation: Changes in organizational structures and administrative processes (may affect Technical innovation).

2 types of new knowledge:

An innovation is when a company use new knowledge to offer a new product or service that customers want.

Technological knowledge: Knowledge of components, linkages between components, methods, processes and techniques that go into a product or service.

Market knowledge: Knowledge of distribution channels, product applications, and customer expectations, preferences, needs and wants.

THE INNOVATIONS IMPACT ON THE FIRMS CAPABILITIES

The organizational view:

Radical Innovation: Technological knowledge required to exploit it is very different from existing knowledge, existing knowledge will be obsolete - competence destroying

Incremental Innovation: The knowledge required to offer a product builds on existing knowledge - competence enhancing. Most innovation is incremental.

The Economic (competitiveness) view:

Classifying Innovation as a function of the extent to which it renders old products noncompetitive

Radical Innovation: Results in a product that is so superior that existing products are rendered noncompetitive

Incremental Innovation: Innovation still allows existing products to stay competitive

Abernathy-Clark Model: Why incumbents possibly outperform new entrants in some radical innovations. A firm's technological capabilities could become obsolete while its market capabilities remain intact.

Focusing on the perspective of the innovating firm, the model classifies innovations according to their impact on the existing technological and market knowledge of the manufacture.

Market knowledge can be just as an important as technological knowledge

Technical capabilities:

Market Capabilities Preserved Destroyed Preserved Destroyed Regular Revolutionary

Niche Architectural

Henderson-Clark Model: Products are normally made by components, building the products must require 2 kinds of knowledge; knowledge of the components, and knowledge of the linkages (Architectural knowledge)

Architectural knowledge: Is often tacit and embedded in the routines and procedures of an organization, making changes in it difficult to discern and respond to. Gives problem when firms believe that the innovation is Incremental but is actually Architectural - components knowledge has not changed but the knowledge of the linkage has.

Architectural knowledge:

Component Knowledge Enhanced Destroyed Enhanced Destroyed Incremental Architectural Modular Radical