Logistics

2Innovation in Logistics

2.1. Sheet 14: Different Types of Innovation

Key point

The Larousse¹ dictionary defines innovation through three aspects:

“1. Introduction into the production and/or sale process of a new product, equipment or procedure; 2. The whole process that takes place from the origin of an idea to its materialization (product launch), including market research, prototype development and early stages of production; 3. Influencing process that leads to social change and the effect of which involves rejecting existing social norms and proposing new ones”. In an organization or chain of organizations, innovation can be both tangible (technological) and intangible (social and non-technological).

2.1.1. Social innovation versus technological innovation

Dandurand [DAN 05] considered two types of innovation in an organization. First, there is a social innovation that is seen as “any new approach, practice, or intervention, or any new product developed to improve a situation or solve a social problem, having found its way into institutions, organizations or communities”. Social innovation is fragmented into organizational, educational, media, urban, (etc.) innovations and considers that “the imperatives of a social, psychosocial, organizational, economic, political, (etc.) nature overlap” in technological innovation. It follows that:

• – social innovation is akin to “citizen initiatives and, upstream or downstream, the impacts of research in social and human sciences, ...