Invention is the creation of a new idea and its reduction to practice. Innovation is the commercialisation of inventions. Innovation is, furthermore, often mistaken for research and development. Innovation is really about economically valuable novelty. It is about new products, processes and services and all the scientific, technological, organisational, financial and business activities that produce them.
Innovation is complex and risky.
Huge amounts of money are invested in innovations, with companies like IBM sometimes betting the company in their belief in new products. Investments like this are risky because innovations fail more often than not. Worldwide, only one in ten new products succeed in the market. Of the roughly 6000 new chemical substances currently on trial for their potential as new pharmaceuticals, perhaps only one will become a successful new drug. There is also a good deal of research that shows that billions of dollars spent on new equipment like machine tools and robots and so on since the 1980s have been wasted.