Microinnovations among the paradigms of innovation research - what are the common ground issues

Abstract

If we consider innovations as human action, this research has been dominated on one hand by social and policy making processes and, on the other, by organizational management thinking. In this study, we shall introduce a third perspective to innovation as action, namely, innovation as a human way of thinking. We claim that innovations are always made by thinking people, and therefore we should also look innovations in concepts of scientific research to human thought processes. Since societal and organizational paradigms concern innovations as relatively large wholes, we term the research on these paradigms as macroinnovation research.Here, we study the relations of microinnovations research to major paradigms of innovation research and in this way define its role within the field. We shall define the common ground points between microinnovation research and such established paradigms as organizational innovation research, innovation processes, systems and especially ecosystems of innovations research, flow of information, diffusion of innovations and finally the research on innovation policies.