Knowledge Management and Innovation

Innovation is a process through which the nation creates and transforms new knowledge into useful products, services and processes for national and global markets – leading to both value creation for stakeholders and higher standards of living. The difference between invention and innovation is that invention is a new product, whereas innovation is a new value (Szmytkowski, 2005). To turn invention into innovation requires different types of knowledge, capabilities, skills and resources. Innovation is a continuous process often an effect of small incremental/marginal changes in the product or process. The EU marked 2007 as a year of focus for innovation within its member countries. Many governments in the EU are putting significant investment into education and business to stimulate innovation. Innovation is the mainstay of an organization. The speed of innovation has been made possible by rapidly evolving technology, shorter product life cycles and high increase in new product development. For organizations to remain competiABSTRACT