The most common accepted innovation is that of the development and exploitation of a new product that has a ‘customer delight factor’. While this is difficult to achieve, many such concepts are based on factors such as:

• the introduction of a product or service from one sector across to another sector
• deep insights to a limited element of an existing product, from which a new product is created
• the exploitation of a new technology.

There is an increasing level of new products, an ‘explosion of products’ when compared with some decades ago. This creates much greater competition, but also limits opportunities by many companies to create their innovative products as they will already have been created and patented. In January 2008, a start up team engaged the CSE to assist them establish with a great new product concept. On checking the CSE unfortunately had to confirm that such a product already existed.

There is increasing attention to innovation in services. The extent of international services provides an opportunity for much greater value through innovation. Many new services are being identified, and many of them are technology bound. The availability and applicability and integrity of the technology become extremely important.

Process innovation has become critical to greater competitiveness. Operational and organisational improvements can greatly enhance the ability of an organisation to carry out business. However processes need to be considered from entirely new angles to make for true innovation. The result can be an entirely new way of working, new models of outsourcing and collaboration. It can also create opportunities for entirely different products and services. In IT we are seeing how improvements in Amazon processes are opening up possibilities of exploiting their network and intellectual assets for new services to major internet operations such as social networking.

Business model innovation represents a new way of carrying out business. An example of this is the change by software product companies to become service companies through operation of their products as a service (SaaS software as a service). In this example the switch is from sale of software as a technology play to sale of a core competence that includes deep knowledge of their market combined with professional services and use of their software technology.