Innovation: Definitions, History and an example fromSocial Housing in the UK: Number 1

By Simon P Taylor

Contents

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Introduction3

Innovation: History3

Innovation: Definitions5

Innovation: The creative process8

Creativity: Academic Models9

Innovation: Social Housing19

Conclusion23

References24

INTRODUCTION

Throughout its history innovation as a concept has been conceived, defined, interpreted and understood in different ways. Having ideas, implementing them, developing new ways of doing things and improving existing ways of doing things have been part of mankind’s history (Godin, 2008). Ideas and concepts have influenced change as well as being influenced by it, reflecting through language the social understanding of the world (Skinner, 1998). To understand innovation the history and definitions within the existing literature need to be examined together with the relationship between innovation and creativity. Innovation within the social housing sector in the United Kingdom is looked at through two academic studies examples of its application within that sector part of the public sector.

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INNOVATION: HISTORY

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Novation was a medieval legal term relating to ‘renewing an obligation by changing a contract for a new debtor’ (Godin, 2008, P 23). As a term innovation was written about by Nico Machiavelli in his book The Prince (1513) and Francis Bacon in his book Of Innovation (1625) but was rarely used until the twentieth century and used significantly in the early twenty first century. Godin (2008) argues that the meaning of the term innovation in the twentieth century has been a resolution between the two contrasting terms of imitation and invention which have evolved through the centuries from ancient Greek philosophy. Within this context Foucault’s question can be used to view the evolution of the meaning behind the concepts signified today by the term innovation.

The imitation of reality was a central theme in the work of Plato and there has been a continuous debate throughout the centuries about art imitating, copying or being an interpretation of reality (Bannet, 2007; Force, 2005; Cole, 1995). Imitation has been considered as invention at different points through history, during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in England patents were given to importers of existing inventions to stimulate economic growth instead of to inventors (Macleod, 1988; Popplow, 1998) and during the eighteenth century the imitation of goods produced for consumption was considered as invention for improving the quality, design and appearance of these goods (Berg 1999, 2002; Clifford, 1999). The expansion of consumerism from the sixteenth century (Berg, 1999) together with the