In the national innovation strategy, innovation is defined as follows:

"Innovation is about novel or better ways of creating value for society, companies and individuals. Innovations are novel solutions which meet needs and demands in everyday life and the outside world. The value arises in the utilisation and application of an idea. The value that is created can take many forms – economic, social or environmental."

An innovation is therefore a solution or an idea which is the result of a development process and which meets a need which exists in the market. It could for example be new products, services, business models and technical solutions, as well as products which combine goods and services and ways of developing solutions where customers and users are heavily involved. Innovations solve problems, meet needs and satisfy demand. One step in the process of developing an innovation is to safeguard the intangible assets. For example, you should consider whether to apply for patents for your technical solutions.

The OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) is an international organisation which works to promote co-operation between democratic industrial countries with a market economy.

The OECD differs as regards the degree of novelty: it can be novel for an organisation, novel for the market (or area of application) or novel for the world. The word ‘innovation’ refers to both the process of developing new solutions and the outcome of the process, i.e. the novel solutions. The OECD defines three types of innovation: process, product and organisational innovations. 

• Process innovations arise when a product or service can be produced using less resources.
• Product innovations entail the development of a new product or service, or the improvement of an existing product or service.
• Organisational innovations are new forms of organisation.

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In the test, we will help you identify your intangible assets:

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