Review: innovation process frameworks

Abstract

Innovation publications have been recently described as fragmented and inconsistent. Consequently the field requires work to synthesise the literature and provide a coherent review of frameworks that have been developed in the area. This paper addresses these shortcomings by first examining the contentious issue of what is meant by the term innovation. The analysis is carried out by bringing together definitions of innovation from disparate streams of respected academic work in the area, followed by the development of a concept matrix. Then the study describes approximately twenty innovation process frameworks assembled from the innovation literature. The paper argues that that, despite the volume of innovation literature, it’s sense-making and progress is severely hampered by the absence of a review of theoretical frameworks. Consequently this work makes a contribution by addressing the gap in the literature.