Future economic growth and social progress in knowledge societies rely increasingly on innovation1.
An innovation is an idea, practice, or object that is perceived as new by a unit of adoption and carried out
into practice (Rogers, 2003). It can be defined as “the implementation of a new or significantly improved
product (good or service), or process, a new marketing method, or a new organisational method” (OECD,
2007, p. 46). Innovation can be new to the world, a market, a sector – or to an organisation such as an
enterprise or a school. In addition to radical, new-to-the-world inventions such as the Internet, the concept
of innovation includes also incremental adaptation and gradual adoption in different contexts.