How do you see the difference between innovation and entrepreneurship?
If innovation is defined as the implementation of creativity, how does entrepreneurship different from innovation, or how is entrepreneurship unique to, separate to, greater than innovation?
@Sascha, this implies entrepreneurship is greater than innovation.
Yet, many define innovation as the implementation of creativity.
So in what ways can entrepreneurship (still) be greater than/ encompassing innovation?
"What is left" for entrepreneurship (to contribute)?
Re-search into 2 different gaps:
--innovation=socio-technical gap,
--entrepreneurship=economic gap.
There is more to entrepreneurship than innovation: opportunity recognition, proactineness, risk taking propensity...
As I understand, innovation is more into the commercialization of new technology-based products. Entrepreneurship is value creation in general. Innovation, on the other hand, is value creation from a new technology/ technology application/ technology product, mostly based on scientific research.
Innovation is applying your creativity to come up with a unique idea or solution. It is technological invention, which lets parts do what they could not previously do.
Entrepreneurship is applying the innovation to bring the ideas to life. It is social invention, which lets people do what they could not previously do. Entrepreneurs grasp the opportunity to cash in on the innovation. They build businesses and propel the innovation forward.
Progress depends on entrepreneurship and great entrepreneurs get even richer than great innovators.
@Stephen, if you separate innovation and entrepreneurship as a socio-technical and economic gap, does it not imply redundancy or waste - separating two aspects that truly should not be separated? Can an economic gap exist without a socio-technical gap, and vice versa?
@Mirna, does/ should innovation not contain/ entail proper opportunity recognition from the start? So can opportunity recognition be outside of innovation? And innovation too requires/ involves risk taking and proactiveness. The only possible difference is to say the entrepreneur initiates innovation, through opportunity recognition and risk taking and proactiveness, which is not really a significant difference.
@Hani, both entrepreneurship and innovation (should) create value, as you also point out. The difference between entrepreneurship and innovation you propose is that innovation is technology based, whilst entrepreneurship is other based. Is it possible to create value without new technology or technology application?
@Carine, you also seem to take opportunity out of innovation - to separate the two.
At the same time, you suggest a more credible difference between entrepreneurship and innovation: introducing a new (wanted, economically viable, wanted, and thus successful) innovation to the market, which is not a given, and should not be taken for granted, even if the innovation has value. In a sense, "hussling" and manoevering.
This is different from taking an opportunity that did not properly consider value offering and potential gap, and trying to get it work in the market.
Separating/ taking out certain aspects from innovation, and seeing it part of entrepreneurship as a subsequent stage, may explain why innovation can fail. You are innovating "blindly" for the sake of innovation/ innovating. Both innovation should be an integral part of entrepreneurship, and entrepreneurship should be an integral part of innovation.
To get more into this in detail I can specifically recommend ->
Crossan / Apaydin (2010): A Multi-Dimensional Framework of Organizational Innovation: A Systematic Review of the Literature. JOMS
Brem (2011): Linking innovation and entrepreneurship - literature overview and introduction of a process-oriented framework. IJEIM
Fagerberg et al. (2012): Innovation: Exploring the knowledge base. Research Policy
Landström et al. (2015) Innovation and entrepreneurship studies: one or two
fields of research? IEMJ
Landström / Harirchi (2018) The social structure of entrepreneurship as a scientific field. Research Policy
@Sascha, i enjoy your detailed answer(s)a lot more.
" Obviously an Innovation Management or an Informations Systems scholar would see this a bit differently."
I understand. Yet, in a sense this is troublesome. It ultimately should not be.
@Martin, these seem like very good references. Can you perhaps point out some highlights? Their essential arguments?
Entrepreneurship requires entrepreneurs and enterprises. Enterprises survive on the sales proceeds. Hence, commerce is the essential ingredient, while Innovation can be an optional value enhancer for entrepreneurship.
On the other hand, an innovative solution may be such that it can not be privatized, but can be used only as public property. Such innovations can't be commercialized and no entrepreneurship can be built around such innovations. Such innovations are usually funded as grant in aid by the society.
Thus entrepreneurship and innovations are two independent domains, with varying degree of intersection.
Innovation is developing a new product or service, their improvement. It could be a prototype but not commercialised yet.
Entrepreneurship is all activities from idea , prototype development, production, merchandise and at the end getting profit.
Yes, innovation and entrepreneurship are inseparable. But one can be an entrepreneur without neccesarily being innovative, isn't it so? For example, if I inherit my fathers' small business and jzst xo tinue do as he did, I am an entrepreneur, but where is the innovation?
In my opinion it will be just business. Entrepreneurship have to include innovation or at least creativity.
Entrepreneurship can be correlated with innovation but this correlation does not always have to be constant and strong. Innovative economic enterprises are usually correlated with entrepreneurship. However, not every business venture is innovative.
Innovation is about a new idea, product or technology and entrepreneurship is about development those for market.
'Innovators are the ones who have brilliant ideas in the shower, entreprenuers are the ones who do something about it after coming out of the shower.'
An innovator is in love with his idea, he wants to keep on adding new features and improvig the idea. On the other hand, to an entrepreneur the most important thing is not to make the perfect product but to actually sell it at a profit.
Nice saying, Md Nafizur Rahman. And very true. There are thousends of people with brilliant ideas that never come to life.
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