Innovation is about finding a better way of doing something. Like many of the new development buzzwords (which many of them are over-used on many business documents), the concept of innovation originates from the world of business. It refers to the generation of new products through the process of creative entrepreneurship, putting it into production, and diffusing it more widely through increased sales. Innovation can be viewed as t he application of better solutions that meet new requirements, in-articulated needs, or existing market needs. This is accomplished through more effective products, processes, services, technologies, or ideas that are readily available to markets, governments and society. The term innovation can be defined as something original and, as a consequence, new, that “breaks into” the market or society.
Innoveracy: Misunderstanding Innovation article points out that there is a form of ignorance which seems to be universal: the inability to understand the concept and role of innovation. The way this is exhibited is in the misuse of the term and the inability to discern the difference between novelty, creation, invention and innovation. The result is a failure to understand the causes of success and failure in business and hence the conditions that lead to economic growth. The definition of innovation is easy to find but it seems to be hard to understand. Here is a simple taxonomy of related activities that put innovation in context:
- Novelty: Something new
- Creation: Something new and valuable
- Invention: Something new, having potential value through utility
- Innovation: Something new and uniquely useful
The taxonomy is illustrated with the following diagram.
The differences are also evident in the mechanisms that exist to protect the works: Novelties are usually not protectable, Creations are protected by copyright or trademark, Inventions can be protected for a limited time through patents (or kept secret) and Innovations can be protected through market competition but are not defensible through legal means.
Innovation is a lot of talked about nowdays as essential to businesses to do. Is innovation essential for development work? article tells that innovation has become central to the way development organisations go about their work. In November 2011, Bill Gates told the G20 that innovation was the key to development. Donors increasingly stress innovation as a key condition for funding, and many civil society organisations emphasise that innovation is central to the work they do.
Some innovation ideas are pretty simple, and some are much more complicated and even sound crazy when heard first. The is place for crazy sounding ideas: venture capitalists are gravely concerned that the tech startups they’re investing in just aren’t crazy enough:
Not all development problems require new solutions, sometimes you just need to use old things in a slightly new way. Development innovations may involve devising technology (such as a nanotech water treatment kit), creating a new approach (such as microfinance), finding a better way of delivering public services (such as one-stop egovernment service centres), identifying ways of working with communities (such as participation), or generating a management technique (such as organisation learning).
Theorists of innovation identify innovation itself as a brief moment of creativity, to be followed by the main routine work of producing and selling the innovation. When it comes to development, things are more complicated. Innovation needs to be viewed as tool, not master. Innovation is a process, not a one time event. Genuine innovation is valuable but rare.
There are many views on the innovation and innvation process. I try to collect together there some views I have found on-line. Hopefully they help you more than confuze. Managing complexity and reducing risk article has this drawing which I think pretty well describes innovation as done in product development:
8 essential practices of successful innovation from The Innovator’s Way shows essential practices in innovation process. Those practices are all integrated into a non-sequential, coherent whole and style in the person of the innovator.
In the IT work there is lots of work where a little thinking can be a source of innovation. Automating IT processes can be a huge time saver or it can fail depending on situation. XKCD comic strip Automation as illustrates this:
System integration is a critical element in project design article has an interesting project cost influence graphic. The recommendation is to involve a system integrator early in project design to help ensure high-quality projects that satisfy project requirements. Of course this article tries to market system integration services, but has also valid points to consider.
Core Contributor Loop (CTTDC) from Art Journal blog posting Blog Is The New Black tries to link inventing an idea to theory of entrepreneurship. It is essential to tune the engine by making improvements in product, marketing, code, design and operations.
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Tomi Engdahl says:
Purple Clothes Using Nobel-Prize Winning Chemistry Could Keep You Cool With The Power Of Outer Space
Usually you want lighter clothes to stay cool in summer weather, but these purple threads have even more cooling power despite their color.
https://www.iflscience.com/purple-clothes-using-nobel-prize-winning-chemistry-could-keep-you-cool-with-the-power-of-outer-space-84458?fbclid=IwdGRjcAT9B9RjbGNrBP0HhXBkb2YFZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAc3J0YwZhcHBfaWQMMzUwNjg1NTMxNzI4AAEes50rA1bxtXwV3TE_QTwWxUrjN6x9VCy-ys7NKO3awLzkqJG_MI-s55I40mU_aem_mkVJz8KMQOgMQVbUdoEx0Q
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/19BQgmL5hC/
Scientists have demonstrated a new way to send information using light that can remain reliable even when the beam is distorted by turbulent air.
Researchers from Wits University in South Africa and the University of Bordeaux in France sent specially structured light through a 270-meter outdoor link in real atmospheric conditions. The study was published in Science Advances on August 14, 2026.
The team used special patterns of light called optical skyrmions. These patterns have a mathematical property called topology, which can remain stable even when the light itself becomes heavily distorted.
As the beam traveled through the atmosphere, heat, wind and turbulence changed its appearance. Normally, this kind of distortion can make information carried by a laser difficult to recover.
But the researchers found that the topological information remained intact.
The system achieved more than 98% information fidelity in most of the conditions tested. Even under the strongest turbulence tested, it retained about 86% fidelity.
The experiment is important because atmospheric turbulence is a major challenge for free-space optical communication — sending information through the air using laser light instead of fiber-optic cables.
The technology could eventually help improve high-speed optical communication between buildings, aircraft, satellites and ground stations. It could also have potential applications in quantum communication.
However, this was still a 270-meter research demonstration, not a finished long-distance communication system. More research is needed to determine how the technique performs over much longer distances and under different atmospheric conditions.
Source: Peters et al., Science Advances — “Topological robustness of optical skyrmions through a real-world free-space link.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
The eight-hour sleep rule is outdated, new study suggests. Here’s how much you really need
The idea dates back to the mid-19th century when the notion of eight hours of work, eight for recreation and eight for sleep first took hold
https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/how-much-sleep-eight-hours-adults-b3040786.html?utm_source=taboola&utm_medium=related&utm_campaign=embed1&fbclid=IwVERDUAT_RsZwZG9mBWV4dG4DYWVtAjEwAHNydGMGYXBwX2lkDDM1MDY4NTUzMTcyOAABHr6-nYzjgS1znugMlMIJbRyaPz55qPgHJ3rty72_BcuKSF28rs4UlZ-vHH4f_aem_gSnUcZFyv0opC7uKAiP2nw
For decades, the answer to “how much sleep does an adult need?” has been simple: eight hours. The idea dates back to the mid-19th century when the notion of eight hours of work, eight for recreation and eight for sleep first took hold.
But growing evidence suggests that eight hours may not be the ideal amount of sleep for everyone, as a new narrative review in Brain Medicine reminds us.
In one early study, researchers found that people in Tanzania, Namibia and Bolivia slept for between 5.7 and 7.1 hours a night. These short sleep durations can’t be attributed to traffic noise, social media use or too much artificial light at night.
The short nights also seemed to be enough: people did not make up for them with long daytime naps. Without an alarm clock, they tended to wake close to dawn, regardless of the day of the week.
But one recent analysis estimated the average to be 6.4 hours.
So, is eight hours too much? These studies make an important assumption that the amount people naturally sleep is the amount they need. That assumes that hunter-gatherers are free from stress, busy schedules and other pressures on sleep. But is that really the case?
But other evidence has emerged from large studies looking at the relationship between sleep and health in industrialised societies.
If we define optimal sleep as the amount linked to the best health, many large studies suggest the sweet spot may be less than eight hours. One recent study used brain and body scans and molecular measures to look at how sleep relates to the ageing of different organs. It estimated the optimal amount to be between 6.4 and 7.8 hours, depending on the person’s sex and the organ being studied.
Many studies find that both too little and too much sleep are linked to poorer health, including heart disease, stroke, cognitive decline and obesity. But scientists are still debating whether too much sleep causes poor health or is instead an early sign of it. Either way, these findings challenge the idea that everyone needs exactly eight hours and suggest that consistently sleeping for much longer may be worth paying attention to.
However, all these estimates of optimal sleep duration are based on averages, and the average person does not exist. When given enough opportunity to sleep, studies find that young adults sleep longer than healthy older adults. Even people of the same age can need very different amounts of sleep.
Current sleep duration recommendations, from the National Sleep Foundation in the US, reflect these individual differences. It says that adults aged 26 to 64 should get between seven and nine hours of sleep per day, but that sleeping between six and ten hours may be appropriate for some adults. That is a long way from the one-size-fits-all eight-hour rule.
Most of us do not wake naturally before dawn. Many of us have short sleep during the working week and longer catch-up sleep on work-free days.
Artificial light is recognised as the main driver of this shift. It changes our sleep habits and delays our body clock, which controls the timing of sleep and wakefulness.
Irregular sleep is also common, particularly among shift workers and university students. Irregular sleep is linked to poorer health. But if you lose sleep during the week, catching up on some of it at the weekend appears to be better than not catching up at all – even though it makes your sleep pattern less regular. So regularity matters, but so does the total amount of sleep you get over a week or longer.
The eight-hour rule is clearly too simple. People need different amounts of sleep, and when we sleep matters too. But one simple message remains: get enough sleep when you can, wherever you can, and don’t worry too much about the occasional bad night.