Sources of Innovation
This type of research aims to increase understanding without an immediate commercial goal.
What is basic research?
These individuals typically master tools of a field but remain generalists.
Who are inventors?
Creativity is the ability to produce work that is both this and this.
What is useful and novel?
These agreements allow firms to share research and development tasks.
What are joint ventures?
These innovators create products to meet their own personal needs.
Who are user innovators?
These two approaches describe whether innovation starts from discovery or customer need.
What are science push and demand pull?
This personality trait drives innovators to challenge norms and think differently.
What is a sense of separateness or rule-challenging?
This personality trait common among breakthrough innovators reflects strong belief in success.
What is intense faith in their ability?
These geographic groups of firms share suppliers, labor, and innovation activity.
What are technology clusters?
These athletes developed the Laser sailboat for personal competitive use.
Who are Olympic sailors?
This law allowed universities to profit from federally funded inventions.
What is the Bayh-Dole Act?
Many breakthrough innovators share this non-traditional learning background.
What is being self-taught?
This tech company allows engineers to devote 20% of their time to personal innovation.
What is Google?
These benefits arise when firms cluster closely and improve infrastructure together.
What are agglomeration economies?
This prize competition awarded $10 million for reducing atmospheric CO₂.
What is the NRG COSIA Carbon XPrize?
These organizations fund or perform research but are not government or profit-driven.
What are nonprofit organizations?
These two types of motivation differ in whether rewards come from within or from others.
What are intrinsic and extrinsic motivation?
Google rewards innovation through these types of internal mechanisms.
What are Founders’ Awards or internal contests?
These informal relationships are especially important in high-tech sectors.
What are informal networks?
Prizes are effective when this legal protection is weak.
What are patent rights?
Firms use this internal capability to effectively benefit from external innovation.
What is absorptive capacity?
These traits—idealism, hard work, modest beginnings—were found in a study of these innovators.
Who are serial breakthrough innovators?
This is the term for a firm’s structure and routines that support individual creativity.
What is organizational creativity?
These occur when R&D benefits unintentionally transfer between organizations.
What are technological spillovers?
In innovation prize competitions, this often exceeds the value of the prize itself.
What is total participant investment?