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Innovation and invention are different but related terms that have often been confused in literature. While invention centres on the creation of new ideas and knowledge, or application of existing ideas to new products (Hannay, 1980), innovation goes further to develop the invention into a product in the market (Trott, 2002). Many models have been developed to help organizations understand and manage the innovation process. Rothwell (2002) identifies the simplest level as the linear model, which considers innovation as a sequence of activities. Dominant views in this model are that either technology or the market is the primary source of ideas to achieve successful innovation. These views are termed technology-push and market-pull respectively. Other models emphasize on the importance of combining the knowledge of the different functional units of an organization. And yet others incorporate the technology-push and market-pull views and identify communication and feedback loops between the different elements of the organization and the external environment.
The existence of many models of innovation does not, nonetheless, introduce a general model that may cater for all industries, or specifically any industry in Malawi. Innovation would create a competitive advantage for firms offering IT products and services in Malawi to one or more of such industries as telecommunications, banking, accounting, financial services, agriculture and healthcare. This paper, therefore, investigates the management of innovation in the introduction of IT products and services in Malawi. In this context, the various models of innovation are discussed to provide the necessary background for analysis and observation. The paper further draws from literature to propose innovation models suitable for Malawi.
The document is organized as follows: the first section introduces the research followed by a review of literature in section two. In section three, the gap in literature which the study intends to fill is identified. The research methodology, presentation of the research findings and an analysis of the results dominate sections four, five and six respectively. A summary of the study is given in section seven.