ABSTRACT
This chapter offers a critical overview of research on innovation and its application to construction research. Van de Ven comments that innovation is a matter of managing 'new ideas into good currency'. In the early 1990s attention shifted to innovation as a basis of productivity improvements in the economy generally. E. S. Slaughter offers a range of five types of innovation. These are incremental innovations, modular or product innovations, process innovations, system innovations, and radical innovation. Radical innovations such as the introduction of steel or structural use of concrete are reflexively tied to the emergence of new industries, new construction systems and construction specialties. The literature on construction innovation is full of typologies. Drivers and barriers to specific innovations thus characterize the literature. While individuals may be champions and particular players such as main contractors or engineering firms can be said to be brokers of innovation, clients again find a place as mediators of innovation processes.
