Managing Innovation: Technology, Consumer and Sustainability Perspective, and the Challenges

Introduction

Innovation can be heard everywhere. Innovation touches every aspect of people daily life. It is not only technological in how people perceived but it covers all areas which includes humanities, sociology, economics, businesses, educations and even arts and history. It emerged beyond to sustainability in modern society. There will be no ending for innovation. Innovation is defined in many ways from different perspective. By dictionary innovation is defined as “the action or process of innovating” and innovate is defined as “make changes in something established, especially by introducing new methods, ideas, or products”.

Over the history, innovation was broadly defined and history conception of innovation includes (1) imitation, (2) invention, (3) discovery, (4) imagination, (5) ingenuity, (6) cultural change, (7) social change, (8) organizational change, (9) political invention, (10) creativity, (11) technological change (12) technological innovation, (13) commercialized innovation (Godin, 2008). The focus of the innovation is variant from different perspective whether from the perspective of sociology, economist, politically, industrial, consumers and so on. Besides, more research that delve into aspect of consumer behavior and psychology in the digital economy is deemed necessary (Ling Chang, Ling Tam, & Suki, 2016; Nathan, Fook Chiun, & Suki, 2016; Suki, 2016). This study examines the innovation from organization and business strategies contexts. This includes the technological innovation aspect that induced the demand of consumers, the consumer’s behavior and attitude that induced the demand of innovation and sustainability innovation that become significant in recent years.

Innovation has become the new focus to an organization and every business leaders agree to it. In every organization it has the slogan of “be innovated”, directly or indirectly. It has seen as the critical success factor for an organization. Nevertheless, when come to clear description of innovation in business world, it was interpreted in variety ways. In practical world, innovation is to address the business challenge and add value to organization and customers by executing new ideas (Nick, 2016). Organization practices strategic innovation that contain creative discovery to achieve competitive advantage (Dogan, 2017). Innovation is originated from Latin world, innovare which is about the change. Innovation is a process of creating value from ideas accessed (Tidd & Bussent, 2014). Innovation is associated with change which it forms the natural part of business and not only the type change is concerned, so do the speed of change. In the new economy environment, it is only ‘innovate or die”. It spells out the importance of developing innovation strategies for organization sustainability and survival. Past performance does not guarantee the future.

Many reputable organizations failed in compete in innovation and many organization rose and succeed due to innovation strategies. Innovation can be any form, new products and services, new process for accuracy and efficiencies. It can be driven from market and consumer need. Technological innovation is labelled as the savior of the organization that had been stagnant for years. There were plenty of debates that innovation comes from technological break-through or customer needs and now it is complicated by sustainability issues. The infinite technological innovation has said to create new demand that market and consumer can never think of. It opens up the possibilities that ordinary consumers could never imagine. In other way round, it is argued that consumers needs push the innovation to infinity. Market demand is the pull factor for innovation and it triggers to response to the demand for the satisfactory of certain classes of needs (Mowery & Rosenberg, 1979).