Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide clarity to the concept of innovation and its various definitions. Design/methodology/approach – The article reviews the innovation literature and proposes that innovation has been conceptualized either from a process or from an outcome perspective. Also, the authors show that there is a substantive difference between innovation seen in the traditional innovation literature and innovation as conceived in the knowledge management literature. Findings – The paper proposes a general framework to categorize the existing views of innovation and show that innovation as an outcome has not been clearly defined from a knowledge perspective. To address this gap, the authors develop a new definition of an innovation outcome based on knowledge elements. Research limitations/implications – The research lays the groundwork for more comprehensive methods of measuring innovation and innovativeness, which is particularly useful for the study of service innovation. Practical implications – The framework and definition expand the ability of managers to measure and understand the key factors of innovation. Originality/value – The research contributes to the literature by developing a comprehensive knowledge-based, outcome-oriented definition of innovation.
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