A Typology of Theoretical Approaches to Innovation

Innovation is often perceived as an object of study in economics and management. However, the social and behavioural aspects of innovation acceptance are as important as the economics of the new product development. Based on the interdisciplinary perspective, the authors formulated their own definition of innovation for the purposes of this study. The authors consider innovation as a change in the way social action is conducted, entailing a wide range of social, economic, behavioural, and institutional changes. The variety of approaches gives rise to the need for a typology. J. Sundbo (1998) divided innovation into three groups depending on the aspect of the phenomenon: the theory of entrepreneurship; technological and social aspects; and the strategic aspect. Adopting the Sundbo conceptual framework, the authors supplemented and developed it based on the literature that appeared after 1998. The authors also added new directions at the second level of decomposition and the relationship between different aspects of innovation. In particular, attention was paid to such phenomena as open innovation, agile innovation, “helix” models, etc. Thus, the authors have developed a novel typology of innovations, which expands the theoretical knowledge in this field.