ABSTRACT
We began with a look at the existing innovating activities, their selfimages, and their present organization. We have shown the mutual dependence of these activities and this mutual dependence was demonstrated according to the ideal concept of the nineteenth century where a self-suffi cient science is taken as necessary to obtain knowledge about a physical or material world which is considered as a fundamental reference system for all happenings. The better the understanding of this world, the better for the world! Scientifi c knowledge is, according to this image, taken as desirable for its own sake, unconditioned and the primary source of all innovation. This scientifi c knowledge is data which is specialized, applied, transformed, and exploited by a chain of other, lower, innovating activities trickling down from the universal reality to everyday usefulness, and providing a more enlightened, better, and more reasonable kind of progress.
