Innovation

What is innovation?

Defining “innovation” is not necessarily easy. What does it really mean? Within a business context, innovation is the commercial application of an idea. To innovate is to transform ideas into products, services and new processes. Successful innovation occurs when the market appreciates and accepts it. We are talking about an activity that is basically economic but that at the same time requires an intensive process of accumulation of know how and a correct application of recourses.

The concept of innovation often goes hand in hand with activities such as research and studies that question which products, services, processes and markets are the most adequate. Innovation however also requires communication with both clients and suppliers, new contacts, and the sharing of experiences among all the concerned parties. Innovations originate principally from the clients and the staff. Innovation is team work.

Many companies in the Lleida area concentrate their efforts on Research and Development as well as the incorporation of complex technologies. These actions alone do not necessarily represent innovation: the innovative process contemplates all facets of a business in a continuous manner.

Being innovative is the best way to continuously obtain new competitive advantages. In what directions innovation takes the company depends primarily on the target market. To maintain a continuous advantage it is necessary that the company assumes, from its beginnings, a commitment to the value of innovation.

Innovation, as we see it at CEEILleida, should touch all areas within a business. We cannot limit ourselves to concentrating only on technological innovation. We must innovate in management, marketing, financing and in the building of strategic collaborations. From our point of view we see innovation as a broad ranged tool which allows a business to focus on its market and maintain a competitive edge.

The projects which ceeilleida supports might have a technological element that is high, medium or low and in some cases even non-existent. In all cases however, they have a high component of economic innovation, something which is of great interest for the greater part of small businesses that form part of the entrepreneurial tendency that generates wealth and employment at a local level.