All companies know that it is imperative to innovate in technology markets, either to keep up or to gain an advantage over competitors. But what is innovation? There is often a great deal of ambiguity when we talk about innovation. To innovate is of course to create something new: but is it to innovate in a laboratory or to innovate on the market? Are we talking about technical or non-technical innovation, an improvement of an existing process or a “breakthrough innovation”? Not all types of innovation are alike and not all innovations are equal in terms of their impact on the market and customers. Some innovations affect products, some do not, some are technically based, some are not, some create customer value, some do not, some reduce costs, some will have a major impact on the market, some will not really have an effect. From a strategic and marketing point of view, successful innovation is “offering a new value proposition to the market and making it succeed in a profitable way”. From this perspective, innovation can be technical of course, but it can also be about services, the revenue model (or transaction model) offered to customers or even image. It can sometimes “disrupt the market”, i.e. change the rules of the game to its advantage.

This section is devoted to the different ways of innovating in a technological environment.