In the context of business management and economics, innovation has mainly been considered as a source of profit and growth. But innovation can also have a transformative role and recently more and more innovators and entrepreneurs are not only considering the financial returns of their projects, but also the societal impacts that they might bring with them.
You can make it as complex as you like, but what really matters in innovation is the simplicity of management and only a minimum amount of bureaucracy. Innovation management is in many aspects different than regular business operations (less predictable, riskier), but in many aspects it is very much alike (basic management practices).
Do large companies need a Chief Innovation Officer? First they need to think more clearly about the range of issues they can innovate their way through and those that they cannot.
