The Emergence of Innovation as a Social Process: Theoretical Exploration and Implications for Entrepreneurship and Innovation

Understanding of business venturing cannot be complete without an understanding of the preconditions and drivers of the emergence of innovation in society. Considerable thought and theory have focused on the diffusion of innovation in society and the properties of innovation attributable to the entrepreneur or the firm. This chapter moves beyond these topics and focuses on theorizing about the emergence of innovations. The authors document how both theory and industry practices are moving away from viewing the emergence of innovation as a proprietary and mostly entrepreneur, individual or firm-centric process to a more open and largely social process. Importantly, institutions are viewed as both barriers to and opportunities for innovation and thus become the fundamental proposition for the emergence of innovation. The chapter develops five additional propositions on the emergence of innovation with both micro (firm-level) and macro (societal) implications. Implications for venture management, public policy, and research conclude the chapter.