What it comes down to is being able to picture a completely new way of seeing or doing something. Our contemporary technique for producing sound, the compact disc, is a good example of this imagining. We rename it technological innovation when it occurs in industry but the CD was a completely new way of audioization, a totally new type of device. It was not an improved version of anything already in existence. The February 20th issue of the Economist magazine included a major examination of innovation.
Disruption is an important characteristic of innovation.
As would be expected, it causes losses in its path of making gains, creating the dynamism of healthy economies. In fact, the disruption caused by an innovation can bring down a whole industry, while simultaneously creating new opportunities for growth. Transistor technology disrupted the vacuum-tube industry, HMOs shook the foundation of the health insurance industry, and the CD killed the needle in the groove. As experienced practitioners, you will surely recall other examples like the ones just mentioned. But students can also learn the process of innovation, risk taking, and rule breaking from models taken from our collective experience and long before they are sent out into the world.