Invention or Innovation?

What is innovation? And are all inventions considered as innovations?

An innovation can be anything which changes lives of people. Anything which gives an impact to how people behave or think. It can be just a simple thing. An innovation should be an upgrade to something we have been using or to something we have been doing. The idea of an innovation should be to solve an issue. The bigger and more significance of problem solved, the better the innovation is. At the same time it should be solving a necessary issue, rather than an optional issue. 

For example, Fosbury flop in high jump. Dick Fosbury was the one who invented this technique in order to be able to jump higher. So the idea was jumping, twisting and bending his or her back around the bar causing the athletes body to clear the bar. Ever since then, this method has become the main technique use for high jump and this is called an innovation.

Fosbury flop

Furthermore, an innovation could be iteration of an invention overtime. To come up with a good innovation, there are several key factors which needs to be considered. The first thing should be identifying the problem and then determining of an approach how to solve it. Next, the solved problem should have some benefits towards the users in order for the users to accept it and start utilizing it. Additionally, with any new innovation, there will be competitors which is a good and a bad thing. The new innovation will only become an innovation if it can tackle the competitors in the aspect of cost, efficiency, simplicity or other factors which affects it.

However, we should know that all the inventions may not make a significant change to people's lives. In fact some inventions are much more difficult than the previous method people have been using. In this situation, that invention will not be considered as an innovation.