Depicting Innovation: cross-cultural factors

Abstract

Schumpeter in 1942 clearly established the necessity of innovation for all forms of global competition. Innovation, understood as something new that can create value, the integration or generation of new ideas to generate products or services is widely view as a key driver for a country‟s economic growth. Further, policies for economic development are often drafted around a country‟s innovative capacity and usually then transferred across Nations as a form of templates for key economic development initiatives. However, there are many definitions of innovation across country/culture levels and therefore the concept of innovation can raise definitional issues. This research argues that a country‟s culture may have an impact in defining innovation and as a consequence in the final outputs. Furthermore, the intention of this research is to understand how innovation is perceived across different cultural groups and demonstrate that a unique or singular perception may not be as effective in depicting this important term. This research presents findings across three different countries with very distinctive cultures, although all of them are in the Asia Pacific area. This study finds that the interpretation of innovation across the responders is influenced by their location. Further study is required to understand in depth the reasons for these differences.