THE MIDLANDS STATE UNIVERSITY

MANICALAND COLLEGE OF APPLIED SCIENCES

NAME: DONALD DHLIWAYO

REG NO: R164447J

LEVEL: 2.1

PROGRAM: MINING AND MINERAL PROCESSING

MODULE: HMIE 212 INNOVATION

LECTURER: DR.I.NYAMBIYA

TASK: ASSIGNMENT 1

DUE DATE: 19 APRIL 2017

The review looks at how innovation has become a solution for resolving many problems in
our modern day society. It suggested three questions. Where precisely does the idea of
innovation come from? Why did innovation come to be defined as technological innovation?
Why innovation is generally understood as commercialized innovation? The paper looks at
innovation as a category and at its historical development. The representations of innovation
and the discourses held in the name of innovation are discussed.
Every individual is to a certain extent innovative. Artists are innovative, scientists are
innovative, and so are organizations in their day-to-day operations. Innovation has always
existed.
Hypotheses exist in order to guide a genealogical history of innovation as a category.
Firstly, innovation arises from human creativity as dictionaries and history suggest. The
second hypothesis defines innovation as creativity through Imitation → Invention →
Innovation. The third hypothesis is about innovation as a break with the past. It is a break
with the past in the sense that it suggests that invention alone is not enough. There has to be
use and adoption of the invention, namely innovation, in order for benefits to result.
The first two parts i.e. imitation and invention are based on secondary sources. The
third part (innovation) is composed entirely of original research and constitutes the core of
the paper.
Innovation gradually came to resolve the tension between imitation and invention.
The French sociologist Gabriel Tarde in the late nineteenth century, made widespread use of
the term innovation and novation as novelty. Tarde’s theory of innovation was threefold:
invention → opposition → imitation. Inventions give rise to imitation. Invention is the
driving force of society, but society is mainly imitative in custom, fashion, sympathy,
obedience and education.
From the 1920s onward, invention came to be understood as a process. “Without the
inventor there can be no inventions” (Gilfillan, 1935: 78), but “the inventors are not the only
individuals responsible for invention” (Gilfillan, 1935: 81). Social forces like race and
geographic factors, and cultural heritage play a part. Even technological invention is social
since it is the modifications, perfections, and minute additions over centuries, rather than a
one-step creation.
Above all, innovation is, to a certain extent, continuity with the past, in the sense that
more often than not it refers to technological invention. The OECD Oslo Manual itself, in its
latest edition, has broadened the definition of innovation to include organizational and
marketing innovation, although this is limited to firms.