What Is Innovation/Innovation Policy, Anyway?

By Alex Usher. I write and tweet a lot about innovation policy, mainly with respect to my frustration with our current government’s two-dimensional views on the subject.  I’ve been meaning to write a piece on how to do innovation policy right, but based on a number of conversations I’ve had with folks, I think it’s important first to deal with the question of: “what is innovation” and “what is innovation policy”? Because frankly these terms are getting slung around with such abandon that they appear to have lost all meaning and many people are simply dismissing the policy area as a large waste of time. More...