Invention Vs. Innovation ~ Clearing the Blur and what BOP markets need

Often the term innovation is confused with invention and thus misread.

Invention is basic science to technology, while Innovation is the business of engineering (80:20) http://fellows.rdvp.org/node/1953

What does innovation do? Innovation unlocks the socio-cultural-economic capital of an invention for a market(s) through sustainable and scalable business model(s).

There are many examples of how an invention evolutionary or disruptive, when leveraged (most often by a third party) through a business model becomes a large business opportunity. Innovation is creating Sustainable and Scalable socio-cultural-economic capital. Here are a few examples below to illustrate this.

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/07_11/b4025070.htm
http://www.techshout.com/hardware/2007/17/philips-compact-disc-celebrates-25th-silver-anniversary-today/
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2002103322_cdman29.html
http://www.whichvoip.com/voip/articles/voip_history.htm
http://openlib.org/home/ila/MEDIA/2003/stdbooths.html
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/10.07/dell_pr.html

Why is this an important and most critical topic? Because in new emerging economies such as Asia, South America, EMEA, et al the opportunities are in Innovation, not that they are not in the top 20% of the pyramid. More so here because the innovation applied to the top 20% may not necessarily work in the middle top the bottom of the market.

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_48/b4011421.htm?chan=innovation_innovation+%2B+design_innovation+and+design+lead
http://feather.planetapache.org/category/business-models/
http://newsroom.wri.org/wrifeatures_text.cfm?ContentID=2174
http://www.nextbillion.net/blogs/2006/06/26/indias-model-t-tatas-2000-car-out-by-2008

From social entrepreneurs and VCs and PE investors to non-profit and Fortune 500 CXOs (who have innovation as top 3 on the agenda) are asking what do we do next? The examples illustrated above are a clear indicator of how large the next opportunities are.

Consistently unlocking the socio-economic potential is the constant challenge and that is the real opportunity. Emerging markets are just waiting everyday for the next big innovation and well, so are the top 20%.