User:Bsinnovation/Innovation Technology

Innovation Technology (IvT) is the name given to suite or technologies which have been proposed as the foundation of the next generation of the innovation process. The evolution of the innovation process has been reported as five distinct phases:
 * 1) The research-push or first generation model was prevalent up to the 1960s. Scientific discovery was the starting point of which only a few would result in the marketing of a new product or process;
 * 2) The second generation model was demand-pull. In this model, innovations arose from a perceived demand, which influenced the direction and rate of technology development;
 * 3) The coupling or third generation model became evident by the 1970s. This involved integrating both research-push and demand-pull approaches and was centred on an interactive process with its emphasis on the feedback effects between the market and research phases of the earlier linear models;
 * 4) The fourth generation approach of the 1980s is collaborative, taking into account the complex iterations, feedback loops, and inter-relationships between marketing, R&D, operations, distribution, and which also brings to the fore the externally orientated aspects of the innovation process.
 * 5) The fifth generation innovation process from the 1990s, more fully encompassed the high levels of strategic and technological integration found between different functions and organisations inside and outside the firm. It captured the ‘digitalisation’ of the innovation process through the use of Innovation Technology (IvT) and new organisational techniques, such as concurrent rather than sequential development.

Gann and Dodgson argue that improved IvTs, in the form of improved: eScience; modelling, visualisation and simulation; and virtual and rapid prototyping may indeed herald a new sixth generation innovation process. This model will be typified by enhanced opportunities to utilise creativity and ideas distributed amongst many diverse actors inside and outside of the firm, and to optimise through simulation and modelling not only the creation and diffusion of new products and services, and the processes by which they are produced and delivered, but also the most effective strategies for delivering value.