Hearing that I'm interested in The New Economy/Knowledge Economy/ Innovation Age, a friend advised me to read Innovation and Entrepreneurship by Peter Drucker, explaining that most subsequent books on innovation are mere re-workings of this classic.
Now that I have read it I tend to agree, with the rider that many of the re-workings fail to incorporate Drucker's key insights.
Innovation is a social, usually economic process, in which the behaviour of people changes due to the acceptance of something new. New services, institutions and organisations are as much the subject of innovation as new devices, but none of these are innovation, rather innovation is the process by which these subjects achieve market share, or generate new markets, or change the societies into which they are introduced.
This may seem obvious, even axiomatic, but I constantly encounter the assumption that innovation is simply the creation, or introduction of a new 'technology'; a misapprehension powered by the valorization of novelty characteristic of Modernity.
Drucker points out that innovation is the activity of entrepreneurs, regardless of whether those entrepreneurs are engaged in starting their own businesses, or are in government, non-profit or large corporations. Entrepreneurs are those who effectively bring about innovation, while inventors and theorists create new things. Drucker then explains what he terms basic rules of entrepreneurial processes.
The book was written in the 1970's, so readers without a sense of history, especially economic history may not understand the examples which Drucker gives. Because of those anachronisms it would be all to easy to dismiss this book, on the assumption that technological change has also has changed the process of innovation. That would be a mistake since Drucker's recounting of basic rules serves as a useful starting place for understanding innovation.
One suspects that Drucker's view on the time it takes new inventions to result in innovation is probably not longer accurate, it is certainly an issue which requires empirical investigation.
This book would be interesting to anyone considering innovation as a social phenomenon. There may be more up to date books for business managers on innovation, I have not yet discovered one which speaks as clearly on fundamental concepts.
