The conceptual dimensions of innovation: a literature review

Abstract

Broad in conceptual utility and cross-disciplinary in nature, innovation has drawn a wide interest among practitioners and academia alike. This literary interest has produced divergent conceptualisation of innovation, resulting in lack of synthesis and joint common language. The problem manifests into fragmented and non-generlisable literary contributions and consequently diluted usefulness of the growing literature. This paper therefore presents a literature review on various dimensions of the concept of innovation to synthesise our understanding of innovation. The aim is to build a consolidated view of the concept and structure the emerging literature on innovation. A case study of the literature on innovation led to identification of five dimensions of innovation and they are: innovation as something new, innovation as a conduit to change, innovation as a process, innovation as a value driver, and innovation as invention. The findings of case study of literature are discussed and then incorporated to develop a model of dimensions of innovation, as well as a sythesised definition of the concept of innovation. The paper significantly contributes towards building theoretical segregation of the concept of innovation along various dimensions, which is expected to consolidate the research on innovation. It will provide direction to researchers to link their research to any one of the dimensions and enhance usefulness of the research output on innovation.