Evolution and Trends Regarding the Concepts of Innovation and Invention

The paper is focused on analyzing the difference between the concepts of innovation and invention in terms of trends and evolution. The research is centered on innovation with invention being a benchmark for validating results. An economic perspective regarding the differences between invention and innovation is presented. The differences between the two concepts are also analyzed from a legal point of view. The number of references to the concept of innovation, made into a large corpus of books, is analyzed from an evolutionary perspective. The concept of invention is also analyzed in terms of number of occurrences in books. A pattern is drafted for both innovation and invention. The paper tackles the interest shown by the online community in innovation compared to the interested showed in invention. Relevant data sets depict the world’s most interested online communities in innovation and invention. Online communities are analyzed by country and by city. Online communities’ interest in innovation and invention is measured using statistics regarding Google searches. Events that triggered picks in interest shown towards one concept or the other are identified and portrayed. Data from relevant reports that are publicly available is presented.


Innovation and Invention
Innovation and invention are two different notions that should not be seen as equivalent.Invention is the first occurrence of a new idea or a new concept in regards to a product or a process [1].Invention is not a random process but is the result of research, study or repeated attempts.Invention must be distinguished from discovery.The latter involves finding or highlighting conditions or facts still unknown.An invention has to be unique worldwide where as an innovation has to be unique locally, in a certain region or area.Innovation is the implementation of an idea or an invention which leads to improving and perfecting a product, a method, a theory or a service with the sole purpose of accomplishing, at a higher standard, the objectives that were originally designed for [2].From an economic point of view an innovation is regarded as an invention that has been successfully implemented and generated added value, profit, higher income or superior quality.Innovation must have a positive impact on society, economy and the political sphere.Not all inventions have the merit to be considered innovations.In the IT industry new software applications or new versions of a product are launched on the market every day.Some are adopted by users and gain notoriety but most disappear into anonymity.
From a legal point of view the distinction between innovation and invention comes from the fact that innovation is an improvement, a refinement of a product or technology, but only locally while the invention has to be new worldwide [3].
According to criteria depicted in Table 1 the only common element between innovation and invention their random nature.Thus both innovation and invention occur in certain scenarios as a result of random processes.Innovation and invention evolved separately and have known distinct purposes and notoriety in society.Innovation was initially regarded as a useless and damaging novelty.
In the 18 th century innovation was identified with the introduction of anything deviant in political affairs and in religion.Innovation was considered heresy [10].In the 1800's invention was a term with a rate of occurrence of approximately 0,0032% whereas innovation had a rate of occurrence of approximately 0,0008%.In the 1800's innovation was still perceived as a damaging process but as perceptions changed and innovation gained a more positive meaning its popularity increased.In 1972 innovation and invention were on level grounds both registering a rate of occurrence of 0,0013%.

Trends in Google Searches
The beginning of the 21 st century saw a change in the way people acquire and share knowledge.Books are fast becoming deprecated in terms of mirroring people's areas of interest.The online environment is the place where people go now to acquire knowledge and share information.Websites, blogs, and forums offer information, are widely available and far less inexpensive than books.On top of all that search engines allow for fast accessing of relevant information.So in order to determine trends concerning innovation and invention suitable for the 21 st century the online environments has to be analyzed.Figure 4    The term invention starts the year 2004 as more popular than innovation but rapidly loses momentum and innovation becomes the predominant theme.Table 8 presents the top 10 countries ranked according to search frequency for the term invention.Ranking does not take into account absolute number of searches but instead focuses on the percentage of searches that targeted invention out of the total searches performed in a country.The Philippines is the country that leads the top for invention according to Google searches.Only one African country is in the top 10 when it comes to frequency of searches regarding invention, namely Nigeria.12 was collected in 2011.

Fig. 12. Capacity for innovation [9]
According to Figure 12 the country with the most capacity for innovation is Japan.Comparing data from Figure 12 with data displayed in Table 6 reveals that only Denmark has made the top 10 in terms of capacity for innovation and interest for innovation.
In order to assess the countries capacity for invention an indicator that measures the number of utility patents per residents will be used.Data collected in Figure 13 was collected in 2010.Data was made available by The World Economic Forum.According to Figure 13, China is the country with the most patents granted followed closely by Japan.Comparing data from Figure 13 with data displayed in

Fig. 1 .Figure 1
Fig. 1.Occurrence of the term innovation in the Google corpus of books [5]

Fig. 2 .
Fig. 2. Occurrence of the term invention in the Google corpus of books [5]

Fig. 3 .
Fig. 3. Comparison between the occurrence of the terms innovation and invention [5] presents a tool that displays in real time what are the most popular topics searched on Google worldwide on any given moment.Terms are updated constantly to reflect the searches performed all over the world.

Fig. 6 .
Fig. 6.Parallel between the search frequency of the terms innovation and invention [7]

Fig. 9 .
Fig. 9. Regions with high search frequency for the term invention [7]

Fig. 10 .
Fig. 10.Cities with high search frequency for the term invention [7]

Table 1 .
Parallel between innovation and invention

Table 4 .
Books and journals published between 1901 and 1950 associated with innovation.In 1903 The Academy and Literature journal states that THE TIMES has made an innovation in the publishing trade, with a clear reference to the fact that an improvement has been introduced.In the second part of the 20 th century innovation becomes the main topic of books and interest in the term spikes as highlighted in Figure1.Innovation moves from being a term used to portray progress and improvement to the status of becoming a concept and a trend.

Table 5 .
Books and journals published between 1951 and 2000 In the 1969 Creativity and innovation book innovation was referred to as a new trend that was gaining momentum: Innovation is a popular word today especially in scientific and engineering circles.The scientific community started studying innovation as a way of systematically generating progress and a method of enhancing performances.As opposed to innovation the term invention was regarded in the early 19 th century as a positive attribute of an endeavour or product.Inventions were protected by law and patents were issues on the name of the inventor.In the 1811 document Reports of Cases Argued and Determined in the Court of Common Pleas and Other Courts references are made to a case where legal action was being pushed for obtaining his Majesty's letters patent for the sole use and benefit of the said invention for a certain term to be specified in the said letters patent.

Table 6 .
Search frequency top by country for the term innovation[7] Tow spikes show up in

Table 6
presents the top 10 countries ranked according to search frequency for the term innovation.Results show an overwhelming presence of countries from Africa in the top.The only European country in the top is Denmark.Fig. 7. Regions with high search frequency for the term innovation [7]

Table 7 .
Search frequency top by city for the term innovation[7] No city from Africa ranks in the top 10 presented in Table7.This scenario highlights the fact that developed countries focus on innovation only in urban centres whereas developing countries tackle innovation nationwide.

Table 8 .
Search frequency top by country for the term invention[7]

Table 9 .
Search frequency top by city for the term invention [7] North America leads the cities' top with 4 rankings, namely New York, Washington, Los Angeles and Montréal, in the top 10 places where invention is a popular subject according to Google searches.India is in top with New Delhi and Chennai and France has Marseille and Paris.
Table 8 reveals that only USA and Canada made the top 10 in terms of capacity for invention and interest for invention.Invention represents a worldwide novelty while innovation is a local novelty.Innovation is an improvement or a refinement while invention is a completely new entity.Society is interested in both innovation and invention as innovation is an economically viable invention that can be exploited in order to generate added value or to obtain profit.The evolution of society's interest in innovation and invention is determined by the number of references to both terms that can be found in a large corpus of books.Google Books shows that society's interest in invention was four times higher in the early 19 th century but the gap gradually closed and in 1972 the two terms were equally matched.After 1972 innovation began to seize society's interest.The beginning of the 21st century saw a change in the way people acquire and share knowledge.The beginning of the 21 st century saw a change in the way people acquire and share knowledge thus using the number of occurrences of a term in books no longer accurately servers the purpose of determining society's interests and trends.The frequency of Google searches related to a certain topic becomes a more relevant indicator of society's interest.Data collected by Google depicts that African countries have a large interest in innovation.The Philippines emerges as being by far the country with the most interest channeled on invention.In order to validate the hypostasis that Google searches can determine society's interest public data is used.Data from the World Economic Forum reveals that countries that have capacity for innovation do not necessarily show an increased interest in innovation.Future development for researching trends in innovation and invention should include refining data sets as African countries have an Internet penetration rate of 16% and relevant trends are difficult to obtain using Google search results.