Innovation

Innovation is a new idea, or more-effective device or process. Innovation can be viewed as the application of better solutions that meet new requirements, unarticulated needs, or existing market needs. This is accomplished through more-effective products, processes, services, technologies, or business models that are readily available to markets, governments and society. The term "innovation" can be defined as something original and more effective and, as a consequence, new, that "breaks into" the market or society.

While a novel device is often described as an innovation, in economics, management science, and other fields of practice and analysis, innovation is generally considered to be the result of a process that brings together various novel ideas in a way that they have an impact on society.

Inter-disciplinary views

Business and economics

In business and economics, innovation can be a catalyst to growth. With rapid advancements in transportation and communications over the past few decades, the old world concepts of factor endowments and comparative advantage which focused on an area’s unique inputs are outmoded for today’s global economy. Economist Joseph Schumpeter, who contributed greatly to the study of innovation economics, argued that industries must incessantly revolutionize the economic structure from within, that is innovate with better or more effective processes and products, as well as market distribution, such as the connection from the craft shop to factory. He famously asserted that “creative destruction is the essential fact about capitalism”. In addition, entrepreneurs continuously look for better ways to satisfy their consumer base with improved quality, durability, service, and price which come to fruition in innovation with advanced technologies and organizational strategies.

Innovation (signal processing)

In time series analysis (or forecasting) — as conducted in statistics, signal processing, and many other fields — the innovation is the difference between the observed value of a variable at time t and the optimal forecast of that value based on information available prior to time t. If the forecasting method is working correctly successive innovations are uncorrelated with each other, i.e., constitute a white noise time series. Thus it can be said that the innovation time series is obtained from the measurement time series by a process of 'whitening', or removing the predictable component. The use of the term innovation in the sense described here is due to Hendrik Bode and Claude Shannon (1950) in their discussion of the Wiener filter problem, although the notion was already implicit in the work of Kolmogorov.

See also

References

Innovation (magazine)

Innovation is a subscription-based magazine, compiling recent developments in the area of research in Singapore and globally. The format and style is designed to be accessible to an "educated layperson", and also includes relevant fields such as patenting. The magazine is jointly published by the National University of Singapore and World Scientific.

To date, local Singaporean companies such as the Defence, Science and Technology Agency (DSTA) and academia have been featured in the magazine.

Key Editorial Columns

Aside from the cover story, each magazine generally has the following columns:

Scholarship

A scholarship is an award of financial aid for a student to further their education. Scholarships are awarded based upon various criteria, which usually reflect the values and purposes of the donor or founder of the award. Scholarship money is not required to be repaid.

Scholarships versus grants

The term '"scholarship"' is sometimes used to describe any financial aid given to a student that does not have to be repaid. However, more precisely, and universally among college financial aid offices, scholarships and grants are quite different.

A scholarship is given to a student because of a reason: the student has qualified for or won it by academic, artistic or athletic ability, or by agreeing to follow a particular career, or has some special ethnic or other characteristic. Scholarships are not given for financial need alone.

United States

In the U.S., a grant is given on the basis of economic need, determined by the amount to which the college's Cost of Attendance (COA) exceeds the Expected Family Contribution (EFC), calculated by the U.S. Department of Education from information submitted on the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) following formulas set by the United States Congress. (The federal EFC is sometimes modified, usually upwards, in awarding non-federal grants.) The federal Pell grant program is an entitlement: if the applicant meets the requirements - has economic Need (COA exceeds EFC), is studying at least half time towards a first undergraduate degree, is a U.S. citizen or eligible alien - the award of the money is automatic. The student has a right to it (is entitled).

Scholarly method

The scholarly method or scholarship is the body of principles and practices used by scholars to make their claims about the world as valid and trustworthy as possible, and to make them known to the scholarly public. It is the methods that systemically advance the teaching, research, and practice of a given scholarly or academic field of study through rigorous inquiry. Scholarship is noted by its significance to its particular profession, and is creative, can be documented, can be replicated or elaborated, and can be and is peer-reviewed through various methods.

Methods

Originally started to reconcile the philosophy of the ancient classical philosophers with medieval Christian theology, scholasticism is not a philosophy or theology in itself but a tool and method for learning which places emphasis on dialectical reasoning. The primary purpose of scholasticism is to find the answer to a question or to resolve a contradiction. It was once well known for its application in medieval theology, but was eventually applied to classical philosophy and many other fields of study.