ABSTRACT
Innovation involves creating something significantly new, better, and of value. Innovation helps create new industries, new products, and better-paying jobs in nations. According to Michael Porter, innovation leads to productivity growth, firms’ and nations’ international competitiveness, gross domestic product growth, and prosperity for a nation’s citizens. To reinvent innovation, it will be helpful to see what approaches have been successful in the past, though not all innovation resulted from conscious human effort. So, this chapter explores how innovation happens and then how to innovate. Serendipity means finding something valuable just by chance, without looking for it. There are two aspects behind serendipity—chance and a beneficial outcome. In addition to the serendipity and invisible hand explanations, much innovation happens aided by the visible hand of organizations and management. The chapter provides few key examples of the role of the visible hand in innovation.
