Societies from different countries and cultures of the world have evolved more in the last hundred years than in the last 20 previous centuries. The adoption of new technologies, the rise of trade, and cultural fusion have led consumers from different parts of the world to constantly change their preferences, requiring new products and services from companies.
That is why, in the face of such a demanding demand and need of changes, companies have made great efforts to constantly innovate in the products and services they offer to the market as well as through tech innovation of internal management processes such as production process, logistics, communication in the company or others.
Tech innovation encompasses situations that result in the launch of new products on the market by companies, the improvement or redesign of existing ones, or changes in the industry and its internal processes. It ranges from the commercial to the productive and from the scientific to the financial. Tech innovation covers it all and several types are depending on their fundamental characteristics.
By encompassing such a large number of different elements and actions, technological innovation has different names based on two main characteristics: the degree of novelty of the innovation and its nature. Depending on these two ways of classifying technological innovations, the following types are found:
Radical innovations are those that represent a break from everything known up to that point. It can be through a new product never before seen on the market or new production processes in the industry. What characterizes radical innovations is that they are not a consequence of the evolution of something that already exists, but that it is something completely original and novel. This type of innovation allows companies to reach new markets by creating unknown products until the moment of their launch, which represents a very positive quantitative and qualitative leap that can directly impact the company’s income statement that created the project. new product.
They are gradual changes that companies implement progressively aimed at increasing the functionality and benefits of the products or services offered. Although the impact of these innovations cannot be significantly appreciated in isolation, when they occur continuously over time they can represent an important basis for progress for companies. Unlike radical innovation, incremental innovation is about offering better technologies not on something new or original but on something that already exists. Based on the primitive characteristics, changes are added that increase the technology and the benefits of a technological process or a product.
If we talk about innovation in technological systems, it can be said that it is both radical innovations and incremental innovations. It consists of offering innovative business management systems or procedures as well as the organization of a company. They can be based on an existing technological system or a completely new one.
Paradigm changes occur beyond the technological and production systems and involve a transformation of preconceived ideas regarding them. The most important paradigm changes can be said to have been the industrial revolution and currently the digital age. They are the innovations that take the longest to emerge, but when they appear they represent a total transformation of what is known until the moment of their appearance.
The innovations described are included within the classification of innovations based on the degree of novelty they bring, but if we talk about the nature of the innovation there are three main types: commercial innovation, technological innovation, and organizational innovation.
The first one refers to any change in a variable in the marketing of a product that involves a change in the way it is marketed; the second is very similar to the innovation of technological processes and the third is based on introducing changes in the organization or in the direction under which productive activity is developed in a company.
It is palpable that any company with aspirations to survive in the medium and long term must bet on introducing tech innovations in their organization, whatever the type. The benefits of innovating are mainly three and they are efficiency, productivity, and quality. These three qualities are well worth betting on and it is almost an obligation since otherwise, the survival of any organization will be in much more danger than that of the organization that does introduce tech innovations.
