Rethinking Innovation: Characterizing Dimensions of Impact
Freddy Solis* and Joseph V. Sinfield
Abstract: Innovation, the introduction of novel or different ideas into use to drive
impact, is receiving increased attention across many domains and is characterized by
many schools of thought. Consequently, studies of innovation have proliferated from
multiple perspectives, including individual, organizational, regional, national, and
societal. Yet the study of innovation has remained centered on the object of the
innovation, analyzing changes across meta-classification schemas such as its form or
function, its underlying technological performance, systems involving the innovation,
or the perspective of the object’s end user.
Taking a previously unexplored point of view—the innovation’s impact on
stakeholders over time and across functional, social, and emotional dimensions —we
reframe the construct of innovation. This view is developed through examination of
the array of traditional classification schema that have been used to characterize
innovation, framing the pursuit and study of impact-driven innovation as an area of
opportunity for practitioners and researchers, In addition, dimensions of impact are
developed based on evidence from historical innovations, underscoring the need to
study ways to more predictably drive innovation that has broad, enabling impact and
facilitates transformations across society. As such, propose an impact-based
classification for the study of innovations differentiating between what are herein
termed “enabling innovations,” and “progressive innovations” that complements
current schools of thought. The implications of impact as a meta-classification for
innovation are discussed from the perspective of embedding pattern recognition of
innovation archetypes into the domains of research, practice, teaching, and learning.
This presents a new way to think about innovation and highlights its implications on
means to develop solutions to important, complex, and unaddressed societal
challenges.
1. Introduction
Although there is considerable debate over the definition of an innovation (Baregheh et al., 2009; Read,
2000; CSSI, 2004; Ferguson et al., 2013), one perspective that is comprehensive defines innovation as the
introduction of a novel or different idea into use that has a positive impact on society. Breaking this
definition down, three key terms are highlighted: “novelty,” “differentiation,” and “impact.” In this paper,
“novel” refers to knowledge that is new (i.e., previously unknown), while “different” refers to insights
that connect existing knowledge in counterintuitive or not obvious ways. Robust schools of thought exist
to characterize innovation novelty and differentiation, but little work has been done to comprehensively
characterize innovation impact in structured ways. Yet impact herein defined as the degree to which an
innovation changes the way individuals, groups, and society live and act is arguably one of the most
important components to address truly complex “grand challenges” (NAE, 2008) or “wicked problems”
(Rittel & Webber, 1973). With this in mind, as shown in Figure 1, this study attempts to provide a
comprehensive view of innovation encompassing novelty, differentiation, and impact by: 1) synthesizing
DOI: 10.7814/jeenv6n2p6
*
Purdue University
83 Volume 6, Number 2 -­‐ 2015
F. Solis and J. Sinfield perspectives on innovation in order to understand historical views of innovation patterns, especially from
the management sciences, which help describe novelty and differentiation, and 2) creating a new
framework that dimensionalizes innovation impact and puts forward a means to classify innovations
according to these impact dimensions. This impact framework puts forward two new descriptors for
innovation to separate “enabling innovations,” innovations with broad impact that often cascades into
multiple societal benefits, from more “progressive innovations,” which generate impact but in more
focused ways and only in select applications.
Figure 1. Characterizing Innovation Novelty, Differentiation, and Impact
2. Method
This work employed a multifaceted approach, consisting of two work streams, to develop a
comprehensive perspective of innovation patterns as shown in Figure 1. The first work stream employed
Boyer’s (1990) scholarship of integration to understand and synthesize patterns of innovation novelty and
differentiation; the second work stream employed a mix of synthesis and integration activity with a
review of case studies (Yin, 2009).
In the first work stream, Boyer’s (1990) method was employed to extract larger intellectual patterns from
prior research on innovation, specifically by focusing on identifying concepts that have novelty and
differentiation as a foundation spread throughout the management, economics, and engineering schools of
thought. The goal of this exercise was to illustrate the landscape of innovation archetypes throughout the
literature, and then to search for underlying themes within such archetypes. This integration exercise
examined an array of journals such as Management Science, Administrative Science Quarterly, Harvard
Business Review, Sloan Management Review, Research Policy, Academy of Management Review, and
Technology Review. Books on specific types of innovation (e.g., Christensen, 1997; Anthony et al., 2008)
were also reviewed to include practitioner-oriented perspectives. This scholarship of integration activity
highlighted four core themes in the types of change driven by innovations: 1) changes in form, 2) changes
in underlying performance, 3) changes in existing systems, and 4) changes in perspectives of end users, as
shown in Figure 1.
In the second work stream, the authors dimensionalized innovation impact by introducing the terms reach,
significance, and paradigm change that can be used to identify what are defined as enabling and
progressive innovations. The identified dimensions of reach, impact, and paradigm change stem from: 1)
systematic exploration of literature that focuses on describing societal impact across fields such as
government, business, science, technology, and engineering, and 2) in-depth reviews of historical
innovations to establish new links between impact and innovation. This process of reviewing impact
literature and historical cases was highly iterative, with each case informing and shaping the underlying
themes in the framework.
84 JEEN – The Journal of Engineering Entrepreneurship Rethinking Innovation: Characterizing Dimensions of Impact The systematic exploration of the literature underscored a missing link between innovations and broader
perspectives of impact and helped to create language that describes innovation impact. Schools of thought
that discuss impact, such as policy (e.g., Hall et al., 2010; Organization for Economic Cooperation and
Development [OECD], 2011; Gurria, 2011; United Nations [UN], 1969, 2000) and science (e.g., Godin &
Dore, 2004; Dudley, 2013) only have tacit links to innovation, and those with an explicit link to
innovation consider impact only in a narrow sense, such as business (e.g., Abernathy & Clarke, 1985;
Feland et al., 2004) and/or economics (e.g., Perez, 2003; Christensen & van Bever, 2014).
To address this gap, literature that explores the history of multiple innovations (e.g., Challoner, 2009,
Constable & Somerville, 2003; Basalla, 1988) and literature that synthesizes multiple innovation cases
into science (e.g., Kuhn, 1962) and invention frameworks (Arthur, 2007, 2009) was reviewed to
understand possible underlying themes in innovation impact. This preliminary review of cases was
followed by an in-depth review of a subset of cases that have address society’s grand challenges; namely,
innovations such as anesthesia, internal combustion engines, steel, lasers, and transistors. Emphasis was
placed on reviewing cases that do not have a commercial to underscore the importance of becoming
effective at describing innovation regardless of the nature of the innovative activity (e.g., research,
development, commercialization). For each case, thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006) at the latent
level (Patton, 1990) was conducted on sources that explore the history of such cases in more depth (e.g.,
Townes, 1999; Robinson & Toledo, 2012) to search for underlying ideas, assumptions, and organization
of concepts that could form the basis of a framework that links innovations and their impact.
3. Patterns of Innovation Based on Novelty and Differentiation
At a fundamental level, researchers have characterized innovation based on form, changes in underlying
performance, changes in components and interactions in systems, and perspectives of end users, all of
which effectively retain a local focus on the novelty of the object of innovation. Effectively, these ways to
describe innovation focus on change and substitution, since they describe the novelty aspects of an
innovation compared to a predecessor.
Early characterizations of innovation focused on the form that an innovation embodied, differentiating
“product” from “process” innovation (Utterback & Abernathy, 1975). Other forms of innovation have
been identified since, including “service” (Miles, 1993), “management” (Birkinshaw, 2008), and
“business model” (Shafer et al., 2005; Johnson et al., 2008; Sinfield et al., 2012). Yet characterizing
innovation by its form only facilitates description of a relatively superficial aspect of a solution to a
challenge.
Researchers have also framed innovation based on the change in underlying technology, and contrasted
“radical” innovations with “incremental” innovations. Radical innovations are revolutionary advances
that significantly depart from current practice while incremental innovations refer to minor improvement
to current practice (Ettlie et al., 1984; Dewar & Dutton, 1986; Damanpour, 1996). While the magnitude of
the advance to separate radical from incremental innovations varies across contexts, a key differentiator
between radical and incremental is the degree of new knowledge embodied in an innovation (Dewar &
Dutton, 1986). This degree of novelty is typically manifested in the physical realm in terms of an increase
in performance along a predetermined critical measure or a decrease in cost at traditional levels of
performance as a result of the innovation (Leifer et al., 2000).
Still, other researchers have characterized innovation on the basis of locus and type of change in existing
systems, differentiating core from peripheral (Tushman & Murmann, 1998), generational from
architectural (Henderson & Clark, 1990; Gatignon et al., 2002), and interdependent from modular
(Baldwin & Clark, 2000). These constructs emerge from the business literature that has analyzed
technical systems and were developed to describe the basis of changes to existing systems and historically
Volume 6, Number 2 -­‐ 2015 85 F. Solis and J. Sinfield dominant designs. A dominant design is defined as a set of core design concepts that correspond to the
major functions or features embodied in components (of a system) and an architecture that defines ways
in which these components are linked in an artifact (Abernathy & Utterback, 1978). These concepts are
typically not revised in subsequent iterations unless there are changes to the dominant design. Core
innovations refer to changes in primary components of a dominant design, while peripheral innovations
refer to changes in secondary components of a dominant design. Architectural innovations refer to
changes in system linkages with minor to no changes in core components. Modular innovations refer to
changes in components without changes in system linkages. Interdependent innovations refer to changes
in both core components and system linkages. Generational innovations refer to changes in subsystems in
dominant designs.
A different model frames innovation from the perspective of end users and their evaluation of dimensions
of performance by contrasting sustaining and disruptive innovations (Bower & Christensen, 1995;
Christensen, 1997; Christensen & Raynor, 2003; Anthony et al., 2008). Dimensions of performance are
defined as design features of a functional, social, or emotional nature (Anthony et al., 2008). Functional
dimensions of performance refer to the properties and characteristics (e.g., weight, speed) of a design
artifact, social dimensions of performance refer to the perceptions of stakeholders, while emotional
dimensions of performance refer to the internal states experienced by stakeholders when using a design
(Anthony et al., 2008; Solis et al., 2013). Sustaining innovations are those which “sustain” the dimensions
of performance of the predecessor via either small-step changes (incremental sustaining innovations) or
large-step changes (radical sustaining innovations). Sustaining innovations lead to opportunities for
“disruptive” innovations. From an end-user perspective, disruptive innovations offer solutions with lower,
yet “good enough,” performance along mainstream performance dimensions, but in exchange provide
new benefits such as simplicity, affordability, or accessibility (Christensen & Raynor, 2003; Anthony et
al., 2008). These tradeoffs enable provision of new benefits that are typically better aligned with the
preferences of a set of end users relative to the benefits offered by more mainstream, sustaining
innovations.
These characterizations of innovation, summarized in Table 1, can be used to frame the novelty aspects of
an idea from the perspective of a change in underlying technology, change in dominant design, change in
system components and interactions, and change in perspectives of end users. These ways to characterize
novelty can be used before an innovation is introduced into practice, ex ante, as well as after an
innovation is introduced, ex post. Further, each archetype has success patterns of its own that can be
further analyzed. For instance, modular innovations depend on how effectively a novel component might
operate with existing system linkages, which emphasizes the need for flexibility and broad compatibility
in an innovation. In another example, the success of disruptive innovations depends upon trading off or
giving up on traditional performance dimensions, otherwise the new benefits such as simplicity,
accessibility, convenience, or affordability would simply make the innovation better than its predecessors
and it would be a sustaining innovation (Anthony et al., 2008).
86 JEEN – The Journal of Engineering Entrepreneurship Rethinking Innovation: Characterizing Dimensions of Impact Table 1. Characterizations of Innovation Based on Novelty and Differentiation
Area of
change
Form
Innovation archetype
Definition
Product
New products or changes in established products
Process
New processes used in the generation of products
Service
New or improved service concept taken into
practice
Management
New or improved management practices
Business model
New approaches to develop and deliver an offering
Underlying
performance
Incremental
Minor departures from current practice
Radical
Significant departures from current practice
Systems
Core
Changes to primary elements of a dominant design
Peripheral
Changes to secondary elements of a dominant
design
Modular
Changes to system components without affecting
system linkages
Architectural
Changes to system linkages without affecting
system components
Interdependent
Changes to system components and linkages
Incremental sustaining
Sustains predecessor performance dimensions with
small changes
Radical sustaining
Sustains predecessor performance dimensions with
significant step changes
Disruptive
Trades off performance dimensions in the pursuit
of simplicity, accessibility, convenience, or
affordability
End-user
perspective
4. Patterns of Innovation Based on Impact
Since innovation is herein defined as a new or different idea which when introduced to practice generates
impact, the development of innovation expertise might benefit from a language that one can use to
describe and infer the potential impact of ideas. Some innovations, for instance, lasers or the C
programming language, are inherently of higher impact than ideas with a purely commercial scope (e.g., a
new laser application). Thus, a language to characterize/classify ideas based on impact— such as the one
put forward in this paper— can help evaluate and prioritize ideas with innovative potential.
Yet to date, impact perspectives have either had tenuous links to innovation or have been very localized in
language and scope. For example, many governmental agencies, such as the OECD (2011; Gurria, 2011)
and the UN (1969, 2000), thoroughly discuss impact from a societal development perspective, but with
little to no link to innovation. In contrast, Abernathy and Clark (1985) describe how innovations may
enhance or destroy the competencies of organizations, Feland et al. (2004) describe a framework to
characterize the impact of product design activities, and Christensen and van Bever (2014) describe the
Volume 6, Number 2 -­‐ 2015 87 F. Solis and J. Sinfield impact of market-creating, efficiency, and performance-improving innovations in capitalist economic
systems. As such, these perspectives on the link between innovations and impact all effectively retain a
business/commercial scope. What is needed is a framework to comprehensively characterize innovation
impact in structured ways.
To address this gap, the authors herein introduce more explicit links between an innovation and its
impact. Effectively, the dimensions of reach, significance, and affect on established paradigms,
conceptually shown in Figure 2, can help characterize innovation impact.
Figure 2. Dimensions of Innovation Impact
Reach refers to the number of individuals, groups, and societal segments affected by an innovation. As
the reach of impact (i.e., individuals, groups, and society) increases, the reach of an innovation will
increase as well. Feland et al. (2004), for example, describe a similar concept as the “impact ring” of an
innovation. Atomic clocks, used in a variety of societal applications such as GPS systems, are part of the
reach of radar, particularly masers (the microwave-based predecessor of the laser), and have high reach
given their impact on multiple individuals, groups, and society.
Significance refers to the magnitude of change in one or more areas of impact, implying that the larger the
number of impact areas primarily/directly affected by an innovation, the greater its significance at the
individual, group, and societal levels of analysis. For each level of innovation reach, different areas of
significance were identified through the integration of impact perspectives throughout the government,
business, science, and engineering literature, as shown in Figure 3. These areas of significance describe
the changes in economics, environment, health, and culture that can be affected by innovations. At the
individual level, for instance, an innovation can affect quality of life through improvements in physical,
social, and emotional health and the ability to control one’s environment or change his or her
consumption patterns as a result of income changes, or impact the nature of work through the creation of
new opportunities for entrepreneurs. At the group level, an innovation can, for example, create new
knowledge that results in new products and services, thus affecting a group’s relative role and positioning
in value networks and the way such groups are organized and interact both internally and externally. At
the societal level, an innovation can, for instance, spur macro measures of growth, investment and
productivity, thereby impacting trade and output, and shift macro measures of demographics,
infrastructure, natural resources, and policy frames. Multiple links exist between these impact levels as
88 JEEN – The Journal of Engineering Entrepreneurship Rethinking Innovation: Characterizing Dimensions of Impact benefits trickle down or up (e.g., an innovation that provides new knowledge for a group can impact
individuals’ socio-emotional well being).
Figure 3. Levels of Reach and Areas of Significance of an Innovation
Paradigms describe a worldview of implicit or explicit rules that guide current thought and action on a
subject (Perez, 2003; Kuhn, 1962; Arthur, 2007, 2009; Dosi, 1982; Christensen & Rosenbloom, 1995).
Some innovations help drive new or different paradigms while others rely on established paradigms. For
example, the assumption that a light source needed to shine continuously (instead of being pulsed) was
one of the early dominant paradigms in laser technology. Similarly, advances based on quantum
mechanics come from a different paradigm than those based on classical mechanics (Kuhn, 1962).
Further, in the financial system, a current paradigm suggests that a potential higher risk in an investment
must be rewarded with a commensurately higher potential return (Myers, 2002).
One might require a new way to frame innovations based on their reach, significance, and paradigm
change, and thus the terms “enabling” and “progressive” are put forward herein to create a taxonomy of
innovation impact. Each of these types of innovation differs in its fundamental components of
significance, reach, and paradigm change and the terms “enabling” and “progressive” thus provide a
means to classify innovations based on their impact. On the scale of impact, breakthroughs are
discoveries or inventions that may be precursors to innovations with different significance and reach of
impact, yet they are not innovations in and of themselves due to their lack of use in practice. Effectively,
evaluating impact based on the significance, reach, and paradigm changes across impact are as allows one
to differentiate between breakthroughs, enabling innovations, and progressive innovations, as shown in
Figure 4.
Volume 6, Number 2 -­‐ 2015 89 F. Solis and J. Sinfield Figure 4. Breakthroughs, Enabling Innovations and Progressive Innovations
Breakthroughs denote fundamental discoveries or inventions that do not yet have any significant impact
since they are often realized at early stages of the innovation process. Breakthroughs are not innovations
but represent the types of advances that are often sought after to address grand challenges given the
opportunities they represent to change established paradigms. They typically come from basic research
(i.e., searching for fundamental understanding), use-inspired research (i.e., searching for fundamental
understanding with an approach that is inspired by or applicable to real-world problems), or applied
research (i.e., seeking specific solutions to targeted problems by applying known fundamental results)
(Dudley, 2013; Stokes, 1997).
The term herein defined as “enabling innovations” refers to innovations that exploit a new or different
paradigm and comprehensively impact individuals, groups, and society along multiple dimensions.
Because of their relatively high significance and broad reach, these innovations are accompanied by a
cascading effect that facilitates additional interconnected developments as a result of externalities.
Externalities are defined as costs or benefits incurred by others that are not taken into account by a
decision maker (McConnell et al., 2011). Spillover externalities are the benefits that an individual, group,
or society receives without having incurred the cost of developing them. Network externalities represent
the effect that a user of a good or service has on the value of such a good or service to others (Katz &
Shapiro, 1985). These externalities result in cascading benefits to society, which would not be possible
without the innovative achievement and are the rationale for the high cumulative impact of enabling
innovations.
In contrast, the term “progressive innovations” refers to innovations that also facilitate impact in many of
the aforementioned arenas (e.g., economics, health, well being), yet with relatively lower significance and
reach, and often without the ability to enable cascading impact benefits in the form of additional
developments. Progressive innovations often exploit opportunities within an established paradigm and are
focused in scope. Many of the current schools of thought to characterize and/or develop an innovation fall
into this type of impact, due to their purely commercial scope and focused goals.
90 JEEN – The Journal of Engineering Entrepreneurship Rethinking Innovation: Characterizing Dimensions of Impact The differences in impact between breakthroughs, enabling innovations, and progressive innovations are
graphically summarized in Figure 5, in which the cumulative impact of enabling innovations is
conceptually illustrated. This figure also highlights the important transition that occurs between existing
and established paradigms over time and highlights the notion that long-term impact of great significance
is often founded on new paradigms.
Figure 5. Impact vs. Time of Breakthroughs, Enabling, and Progressive Innovations
A broad array of cases presents the pattern described in Figure5, and Table 2 presents example cases of
breakthroughs, enabling innovations, and progressive innovations, which were assembled by reviewing
literature on the history of discovery, invention, and innovation described in the methodology section of
this paper. This table shows that in enabling innovations, the cumulative impact of exploiting a novel
paradigm is greater than the focused (yet still positive) impact of progressive innovations. Effectively,
many progressive innovations are dependent on the historical breakthroughs and enabling innovations of
society, suggesting that breakthroughs and enabling innovations represent a potential avenue to better
understand how to innovate intentionally and address society’s complex challenges. However, the
diagrams in Figures 4 and 5 and the cases in Table 2 do not imply a linear process of innovative impact.
For example, the laws of thermodynamics (a conceptual breakthrough) were derived through study of the
operations of steam engines (an enabling innovation) (Dudley, 2013).
The history of lasers provides a concise example that illustrates the differences between enabling and
progressive innovations. Knowledge for the invention of lasers existed approximately 40 years before the
conceptualization of the first laser, yet the breakthrough for the concept of the laser came from the
realization that maser (the laser’s microwave-based predecessor) principles could be applied to light
manipulation (Townes, 1999). However, many “generational” issues needed to be solved regarding
maser-laser artifacts.
Volume 6, Number 2 -­‐ 2015 91 F. Solis and J. Sinfield Table 2. Historical Cases on Innovation Impact
Breakthrough(s)
and generational
enablers
Platform and
Progressive
Innovations1
Discovery of an etherbased gas that
produces insensibility
by inhalation
Use of first gasbased forms of
anesthesia based on
nitrous oxide, ether,
and chloroform
• Airway anesthesia
• Local anesthetics
• Intravenous
anesthetics
• Endotracheal
anesthesia
• Intubation techniques
• Anesthetic machines
• Anesthesia
equipment
Discovery of the
principles and
invention of the first
piston engines
Adoption of the first
internal combustion
engine in drilling
and automobiles
•
•
•
•
Invention of the
Bessemer process as a
low-cost means to
manufacture steel
Discovery of the
possibilities for the
manipulation of light
Advances in solid state
physics and
semiconductors
1
Enabling
Innovation
Steel manufacturing
Lasers
Transistors
Spark plugs
Ignition coils
Carburetors
Turbochargers
• Mini mill steel
manufacturing
• Steel composition
variations (e.g.
galvanized, stainless)
• Electric arc furnaces
Cumulative Impact1
Reduction in surgical death rates
Creation of a new profession
Creation of new equipment
Creation of new services
Investment in anesthesia-based
firms
• Improvement in socio-emotional
well being
•
•
•
•
•
• Increases in employment
• Investment and productivity
increases through mechanization
• Changes in transportation means
•
•
•
•
•
Increases productivity
Creation of new firms
Creation of new services
Creation of new employment
Increase in investment
Instrumentation
Surveying equipment
Lasik surgery
Remote sensing
(LIDAR)
• Fiber optics
• Target tracking
• Etching
• Increases in health through surgical
precision
• Increases in productivity
• Creation of new firms
• Investment in new technologies
• Creation of new knowledge
• Changes to communications
equipment
• Increases in productivity due to
manufacturing changes
• Increases in defense capabilities
due to military equipment
Radios
Computers
Processors
Communications
equipment
• Cell phones
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Creation of new firms
Increases in productivity
Creation of new knowledge
Increase in employment
Increases in income
Comparative advantage of nations
Not exhaustive due to the relatively large cumulative impact of enabling innovations
In 1960, the first laser was created and the enabling effect of such an innovation spread rather quickly
since laser technology triggered advances with broad reach at the individual, group, and societal levels.
The significance of lasers lies in their impact across all areas in Figure 3. This innovation quickly
92 JEEN – The Journal of Engineering Entrepreneurship Rethinking Innovation: Characterizing Dimensions of Impact triggered the creation of new firms dedicated to commercializing the technology. Externalities were
triggered and new knowledge continued to emerge that resulted in applications in a broad array of fields,
such as medicine (particularly in surgery), manufacturing (particularly measurement), and science
(particularly as equipment). Entire new fields, such as lidar, a remote sensing technique that combines
principles of light and radar, with applications in geology, physics, geomatics, forestry, and seismology,
were enabled due to the introduction of the laser. Because of the new benefits to society, for instance in
surgical precision, additional secondary benefits such as socio-emotional well-being were realized. In this
arena, developments enabled laser-based surgery, with Lasik, a procedure for vision correction, being an
example. While this surgical procedure does stem from a breakthrough (i.e., the discovery that lasers
could etch living tissue without thermally affecting surrounding areas), it is classified as a progressive
innovation given its focused application, compared to the broader, enabling effect of lasers and masers.
5. Discussion
Overall, using impact-based language to discuss innovation complements current schools of thought
regarding innovation and can have a broad range of applications in the domains of practice, teaching and
learning, and research. Implications for each of these domains are described in the following paragraphs.
In the domain of practice, awareness of the ways to frame innovation described herein could improve
design activities for complex problems. To date, perspectives on the novelty and differentiation of
innovative ideas exist, but perspectives on impact have been limited in scope and structure—a gap that
the terms “enabling” and “progressive” put forward herein intend to address. As one innovates,
understanding the different perspectives of innovation and the importance of impact can inform design
choices, particularly at early stages, and steer ideas toward success based on this understanding,
regardless of whether the pursuit of these ideas is solely for a commercial purpose or has broader societal
benefit. These design choices are especially important in the early stages of enabling innovations, where
ideas are often “shaped” to become higher impact and/or enabling. Of particular importance is the notion
of proactively ensuring that ideas do not get locked into a particular application and that a broad portfolio
of applications for ideas with enabling potential is considered and explored early in the innovation
process. For researchers (e.g., faculty, graduate students), who typically operate in the pursuit of
breakthroughs and enabling innovations, these views of innovation can be particularly useful as they
provide a new language and way to think about research activities. As such, the model can inform the
education of engineering students engaged in research and provide a model for mentor-mentee
conversations regarding research impact. For situations in which quantitative evidence of impact is
required, each of the areas of significance in Figure 3 could be translated into a metric (or set of metrics)
that aids decision-makers to help prioritize and focus pursuits.
In the domain of teaching and learning, more research is needed on the effect of making students aware of
the ways to frame innovation at different educational levels as well as the most effective mechanisms to
conduct such instruction. Instruction on the ways to frame innovation can come from a broad range of
pedagogical approaches, including direct lecture on the patterns, case studies, mentoring and coaching in
experiential learning settings, and online games and simulations. There is also an opportunity to
encourage students and researchers to work on more complex problems and think about reach,
significance, and paradigm changes so that they can have greater impact on the world. For instance, many
implications exist for engineering education, particularly by providing a new way to think about the
research-to-practice component of ideas using the herein developed impact language. Effectively, the
enabling innovation framework can guide engineering faculty and student pursuits, whether in research,
teaching, industry, non-profit, or entrepreneurship activities by providing a more comprehensive
perspective of innovation, and a language and structure that can be used to evaluate, prioritize, and pursue
ideas.
Volume 6, Number 2 -­‐ 2015 93 F. Solis and J. Sinfield Finally, more research is needed to enhance the enabling innovation framework and address its
limitations. For example, increasing the number and variety of cases examined as well as examining such
cases in more detail at each stage of the model can help move the enabling innovation model from a
descriptive theory/framework to normative theory (Carlile & Christensen, 2005) thus enhancing the
qualitative richness of the model. More research is also needed to develop the aforementioned
quantitative metrics of impact that facilitate the creation of data that could help innovation decision
makers. The authors are currently working to address these issues while simultaneously developing an
understanding of patterns of thought and action that are tailored to the characteristics of enabling
innovations.
6. Conclusion
This study reframed the construct of innovation by characterizing the areas of its definition and reviewed
the current ways in which researchers, particularly within the management sciences, have described and
thought about innovation, which tend to focus on the novelty of innovations. These views are
complemented by concepts developed herein: namely, an impact-based characterization of innovation that
makes innovation impact dimensions explicit, and differentiates between breakthroughs, enabling
innovations, and progressive innovations. This research does not claim that these characterizations of
innovation or the dimensions of impact are the only ones that exist; yet they provide a useful start in
developing an impact-based taxonomy of innovation that can complement current schools of thought on
the subject. In summary, these views of innovation contribute to the development of innovation expertise,
since they describe patterns that can be used to identify, characterize and evaluate ideas with innovative
potential. The varied degree of scale and complexity of engineering challenges calls for different types of
innovation and thus underscores the importance of clearly defining the nature of the innovation needed
from future engineers.
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