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1. Introduction
Innovation is a significant element of organizational effectiveness, performance, business success and wealth creation (Cropley et al., 2011; Jimenez-Jimenez and Sanz-Valle, 2011). A historical overview of innovation reveals that the innovation procedure occurs at every point of an organization’s development life cycle – from start-up to decline or reinforcement (Lester et al., 2003). According to Konstantakis and Michaelides (2017), Schumpeter described innovation as the primary cause of transition in the economy and a link between new ideas and the marketplace. Over the years, innovation research has shifted from traditional scientific discoveries such as new product development to new-age organizational innovation that covers new product design and innovative corporate practices (Barbieri and Alvares, 2016).
Ortt and van der Duin (2008) stated that innovative practices had evolved over five generations. The first generation was the push era of innovation, where companies focused predominantly on scientific discoveries for new product development. This evolution of innovation has driven technological innovation through research and progress toward a profitable product or new ideas as an outcome. The succeeding generation was the market pull era of innovation. This generation concentrated on market determination, new product development, production and distribution. The primary focus was to respond to market demand through initiatives by the research and development (R&D) team. The coupling era was the third generation of innovation. This innovation era overcomes the shortcomings of the previous generations by combining push-and-pull systems with feedback loops. The fourth-generation innovation emerged as a process carried out across the organization. This generation was an era of integrated business processes. Innovation focused on synchronized learning from external agents such as vendors, buyers, academics and government bureaus with internal cross-functional departments. The fifth generation of innovation was an extension of the integrated system of innovation of the fourth generation.
Innovation also focused on the quality of the product. Studies on innovation have evolved through generations. The corporate sector is looking at creativity and innovation to develop across industries and occupations (Cekmecelioglu and Gunsel, 2013). Innovation is vital to a firm’s survival in an ever-changing business environment; it enables organizations to adjust to industry and customer demand (Tohidi and Maryam, 2012).
Innovation has been studied and defined from various perspectives across disciplines. Different definitions include various...