# Innovation is measured by impact The concept of an “innovation” is one of those [[Nebulous]] things that we love to talk about, know it what we see it, and create many ever-insufficient definitions for. There is no single definition of innovation because the boundaries of what is and what is not an innovation are extremely fuzzy. At the same time, it feels like a useful grouping. There are many useful questions to be asked about innovations (how do we enable more of them? what are different types? etc.) that don’t require being able to draw a clear ontological boundary around them. So instead of trying to define it precisely I’m going to play around with the ingredients that help us know it when we see it. A couple of definitions from [several surveys of different definitions](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Innovation) : `Innovation is the multi-stage process whereby organizations transform ideas into new/improved products, service or processes, in order to advance, compete and differentiate themselves successfully in their marketplace”` `Innovation is production or adoption, assimilation, and exploitation of a value-added novelty in economic and social spheres; renewal and enlargement of products, services, and markets; development of new methods of production; and the establishment of new management systems. It is both a process and an outcome.` `”An idea, practice, or object that is perceived as new by an individual or other unit of adoption”` A couple of notions seem to show up repeatedly: the sense of newness, domain-independence, usefulness, and scale dependence (ie. Something can be an innovation for a person but not the world.) It also feels useful roughly lump newness, usefulness, and scale together into impact (another nebulous term) because it allows us to rule out a whole lot of things that are new useful things but don’t feel like they should be innovations like little dustmops that you put on your cat’s feet. Maybe those catfootdustmops are an innovation for someone who has a lot of cats but absolutely despises dusting, but it’s hard to argue that they have had a *global* impact. Aha! When we’re talking about innovations we are defaulting to talking about global innovations but we could of course specify a different scale. Of course, it raises the point that almost nothing comes into being as a globally impactful thing - innovation is not a property of a thing but is a result of its history. [Web URL for this note](http://notes.benjaminreinhardt.com/Innovation+is+measured+by+impact) [Comment on this note](http://via.hypothes.is/http://notes.benjaminreinhardt.com/Innovation+is+measured+by+impact)