Invention is the creation of new products and processes throughout the development of new knowledge or from new combinations of existing knowledge. Most inventions are the result of novel applications of existing knowledge. Somuel Morse’s telegraph ,patented in 1840, was based on several decades of research into electromagnetism, from Ben Franklin to Orsted, Ampere and Sturgion. The compact disc embodies knowledge about lasers developed several decades previously.
Innovation is the initial commercialization of invention by producing and marketing a new good or service or by using a new method of production. Once the innovation has occurred, it diffuses: on the demand side through customers purchasing the good or service; on the supply side, through imitation by competitors. An innovation may be the result of a single invention (must product innovations in chemicals and pharmaceuticals involve the discovery of a new chemical compound) or it may combine many inventions (the first automobile embodied a multitude of inventions, from the wheel invented some 5000 years previously, to the internal combustion engine).
Robert Grant
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