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Business related innovation phenomenon in historical retrospective
Although for many people all over the world “innovation” is a fairly modern phenomenon
which acquired real importance by the end of the 20th century, it is rooted in late Middle
Ages. Therefore it is essential to approach innovation in the context of genealogical history
of its socioeconomic development. Recently a number of researches, including Bailey and
Ford (2003), Godin (2008), Kotsemir, Abroskin and Dirk (2013), have accomplished studies of
innovation as a category and socioeconomic phenomenon.
It can be stated that the category “innovation” – generally perceptible as “the act of
introducing something new” or “something newly introduced”– both historically and
etymologically is most closely related to the categories of “invention” and “novelty” (“The
American,” n.d.). Invention with the sense of finding or discovery, namely with regard to
knowledge, or science (knowing), started to be applied in the 14th century mainly in poetry
as well as in visual arts. Unfortunately almost up to the end of the Middle Ages there was a
negative perception of invention and inventors practically in all spheres of society’s life.
Because of weak development and inaccessibility of science inventors were often seen as
heretics or suspicious people. Since the 16th century category of invention was increasingly
used in relation to newly-created artefacts. The idea of novelty has become a cultural and
science value since the 17th century. According to Skinner (1988), words are markers of the
social understanding of the world, and the emergence of new words is a marker of changes
in society’s values. Roots of literal usage of the category “innovation” in a near modern
perception go back to the Renaissance. The Prince written in 1513 by Machiavelli
(1532/1961) and Of Innovations written in 1625 by Bacon (2002/2008) are among the very
few works then devoted to innovation, using the term as such, and to the resistance of
people to innovation.
The first theory of innovation was created by the French sociologist G. Tarde in the late 19th
century. It can be qualified as threefold process involving invention, opposition and
imitation. Then innovation was seen by him as the change in social constructs. Thereby
Tarde facilitated wider usage of the term innovation as a novelty, but with no explicit
definition. Almost till the middle of the 20th century sociologists approached the concept of
innovation as a polysemous paradigm: simply novelty; social change with the meaning of
social invention; the use of technological inventions with their social effects. One had to
wait for prominent sociologist Rogers for other similar broad theories of innovation in
sociology (as cited in Godin, 2008). The definition of innovation generated by Rogers (1983),
author of the theory of diffusion of innovations, is noteworthy: “An innovation is an idea,
practice, or object that is perceived as new by an individual or other unit of adoption” ( pp.
11). Thus, innovation shall involve implementation of the “new” by an adopter. Herewith
Rogers handled innovators as one of the five types of adopters along with early adopters,
early majority, late majority, laggards. “The salient values of innovators are
venturesomeness and gatekeeping role in the flow of new ideas into a social system” (pp.
248). Roger’s theory of diffusion of innovations along with his elaborated model of
innovation gave rise to further studies on development, adoption and diffusion of
innovations in and beyond the pale of sociology.
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