INNOVATION
&
INFORMATION
Definitions, types, interactions
Resources
Tefko Saracevic, PhD
http://comminfo.rutgers.edu/~tefko/
tefkos@rutgers.edu
Tefko Saracevic
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License
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INNOVATION:
One of the most critical issues of our time
Presently, THE key in global economy
But persistent questions:
What produces innovation?
• How might we nurture it?
What are the outcomes of innovation?
• How to predict which will succeed?
Innovation as a process
Innovation as a product
Tefko Saracevic
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Central idea of the presentation:
Explore many facets of innovation
Everybody knows
what is innovation.
RIGHT!
RIGHT? ?? ???
Everybody knows where
to look for information
for innovation.
RIGHT!
RIGHT? ?? ???
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Organization of the presentation
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Innovation around the
world
Governments & international agencies take it
to be critical to “wealth of nations” [Adam Smith, 1774]
View innovation as a must for competitive
advantage in a globalized economy
Wish to measure—and therefore manage—
innovation more explicitly
Policies aiming at creating right conditions for
innovation sought, instituted
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Some influential information sources
Org for Econ Co-op & Dev
34 countries incl. Chile,
Mexico, not yet Brazil – has
country specific programs
• Economic Surveys of Brazil
2011
Oslo Manual adapted in
many countries to survey
innovation
covers innovation in
business enterprises only
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Modern information
retrieval: The concepts &
technology behind search
Most cited IR text ever
some 10,000 times in
Google Scholar
Baeza-Yates (from Chile)
now VP of Yahoo! Research for
Europe and Latin America, leading
the labs at Barcelona, Spain,
Santiago, Chile & Haifa, Israel
Ribeiro-Neto (from Brazil)
Few free chapters & great slides: http://www.mir2ed.org/
Free first ed: http://people.ischool.berkeley.edu/~hearst/irbook
Tefko Saracevic
prof at UFMG, Director of
Engineering and Site Lead, Google
Engineering Office for Latin America
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Official definitions of innovation
OECD, Oslo Manual, 2005
The implementation of a new
or significantly improved
product (good or service), or
process, a new marketing
method, or a new
organizational method in
business practices,
workplace organization, or
external relations.
Tefko Saracevic
US Dept of Commerce,
2008
The design, development, and
implementation of new or
altered products, services,
processes, organizational
structures, and business
models to create value for
the customer and financial
returns for the firm
practicing innovation.
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How to measure innovation?
A most difficult proposition
Traditional measures
- no longer enough
Awarded patents
Investment in R&D
Return on Investments
Productivity increase
Intellectual property
rights protection
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Newer measures
New services &
products
their share in profits
Science & R&D policies
that spur innovation
Openness to
competition
Hard & soft measures
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For development of innovation policies
Necessary to better understand
innovation process, such as innovation activities
other than R&D
the interactions among actors
the relevant knowledge flows
Also requires further advances in the analysis
of innovation
which in turn requires obtaining better
information
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Sector with most attention
Four types of innovations are distinguished:
product (goods & services) innovations
process (production & delivery) innovations
marketing innovations
organizational innovations
In each can be
incremental innovation
disruptive innovation
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Incremental innovation
Improvement of that which already exists
making them better, faster, cheaper
market-pull & technology-push innovation
Most innovation is incremental
Mostly done in bigger enterprises
at times resisted internally
Requires team effort, management support &
leadership
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Information needed
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Disruptive innovation –
radical change
Changes the way people have been dealing with something
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Disruptive innovation
[Clayton Christensen formulated the concept]
New technologies, products, services
Mostly done by small enterprises, individuals
depends on venture capital, easy regulations ...
high risk taking, learning from failures
explore/exploit benefits of linkages
Bring to the market very different value
propositions
it is the user who knows best
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Many legendary examples –
but a long, long way to success
Hewlett-Packard,
Yahoo!, Google,
Apple, Amazon,
Nokia, Facebook,
Twitter ...
Fruitful connections,
linkages
Passion is essential
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Collaborative creativity & innovation
Another view of
creativity – highly
cooperative:
Creation by users,
consumers
organize without
organizations
e.g. innovating new
software programs,
apps
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Charles Leadbeater at a TED conference
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Institutions
In addition to commerce, many other sectors
& institutions are innovating – some radically
having a profound social & economic impact
Examples:
digital libraries
educational institutions
social innovation
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Digital libraries definitions
More technically oriented
... collection of digital objects,
including text, images, video,
and audio, along with
methods of access and
retrieval, and for selection,
creation, organization,
maintenance, and sharing of
the collection.
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More socially oriented
... organizations that provide the
resources, to select, structure,
offer intellectual access to,
interpret, distribute, preserve
the integrity of, and ensure the
persistence over time of
collections of digital works so
that they are readily and
economically available for use
by a defined community.
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Example of a digital library:
Association for Computing Machinery
Worldwide professional & scientific organization
100,000+ members from over 100 countries
supports, follows & honors innovation
Keeping up with current developments:
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Major source for technical
information, applications,
innovations
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Innovation in education:
Massively open online courses (MOOC)
Delivering learning online that invites the
world not only to see and hear but also to
participate and collaborate – free & open
Several universities developed & offer
MOOCs
Considered a revolution in education
extending the reach globally
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Most prominent efforts
Stanford U: Last Fall 160,000 students enrolled world wide.
Own Facebook group. Translated into 44 languages, including Portuguese
MIT: started MITx Spring 2012. This is the first course. Worldwide enrollment
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Social innovation
A novel solution to a social problem that is
more effective, efficient, sustainable, or just
than existing solutions.
New strategies, concepts, ideas & organizations
that meet social needs of all kinds, e.g.
innovation in public services
more sustainable behaviors in order to enjoy them
innovations with social purposes
• e.g. microfinance or distant learning
European Union emphasizes &
funds social innovation
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Some information sources
Scholalry treatment & questions
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“Describes the methods and tools for
innovation being used across the world”
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Information resources &
services for innovation
Information
Knowledge
Ideas
Innovation
Flow from information to ideas does NOT
guarantee innovation, but is still critical
But:
What kind of information?
Where does it come from?
How?
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Answers not simple
Multiple sources
Multiple channels
All mixed
together
Highly dynamic interactions
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Sources of information:
Is
enough?
HUGE, HUGE, HUGE mistake to think that it is!
tremendous amount of information is in Google but
tremendous amount is NOT in Google, e.g.
• all articles in copyrighted journals – literature in science &
technology, biomedicine, social sciences, humanities ...
• patents; business, marketing, legal information
• contents of databases, such as Web of Knowledge, Scopus
& hundreds of others
• all very important for innovation
Even there is more to Google than Google
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A new
feature:
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Many kinds of information resources
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Sources of information for innovation
Subjects literature
Searching in databases
• general & subject specific
• e.g. Scopus; Medline
Open sources
Open access journals on
innovation - 36 journals, 3
from Brazil
Web sites
Gray literature
Tefko Saracevic
Business literature,
reports, statistics
country, area reports
international agencies
• UN, OECD libraries
Marketing studies
Technology reports
Books about innovation
Conferences
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Scopus – a very large database
simple search
sorted by highest
cited articles
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Scopus innovation search: no. of articles by country
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Scopus innovation search: Subjects covered
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TED-Ed: Educational videos from TED
conferences
“Riveting talks by remarkable people, free to the world”
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Flipping a lesson: customize to own use
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Instead of conclusions:
Twitter definitions of innovation
“Continued failure until you reach success.”
“A new idea that has a favorable economic outcome.”
“A simple idea, executed well and adopted widely.”
“Innovation = Invention + Business Insight +
Execution.”
“Way to see things not as they are, but as they can be,
borrowing data from other arenas and combining
processes for better results.”
“What everyone around me seems to be so afraid of.”
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Presentation in Wordle
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URLs for information used
Source
URL
Adam Smith, The wealth of nations, 1776
http://political-economy.com/wealth-of-nations-adam-smith/
OECD, Oslo Manual, 3rd ed., 2008
http://www.oecd.org/document/23/0,3746,en_2649_34409_35595607_1_1_1_1,00.html
OECD, Economic surveys Brazil 2011
http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/12/37/48930900.pdf
Modern Information Retrieval 1st ed.
http://people.ischool.berkeley.edu/~hearst/irbook/
Modern information retrieval 2nd ed.
http://www.mir2ed.org/
Clayton Christensen, Disruptive innovation
http://www.claytonchristensen.com/disruptive_innovation.html
Stanford Social Innovation Review
http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/rediscovering_social_innovation/
Open book of social innovation
http://www.youngfoundation.org/publications/reports/the-open-book-social-innovation-march2010
ACM News
http://technews.acm.org/about.cfm
ACM Digital Library
http://dl.acm.org/
Innovation Management
http://www.innovationmanagement.se/
Little innovation book
http://littleinnovationbook.com/
GeekWire
http://www.geekwire.com/
International Journal of Innovation Management
http://www.worldscinet.com/ijim/
Inf technology & innovation foundation
http://www.itif.org/
Educause, 7 things you should know about MOOCs
http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ELI7078.pdf
Directory of Open Access Journals - innovation
journals
http://www.doaj.org/doaj?func=findJournals&uiLanguage=en&hybrid=&query=innovation
Stanford U MOOC Artificial intelligence
https://www.ai-class.com/
MITx MOOC Circuits & electronics
https://6002x.mitx.mit.edu/
TED conferences
http://www.ted.com/
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TED-Ed
http://education.ted.com/
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IBICT Master’s class 1972
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