Three area economic development leaders say defining innovation can be tricky – but they all agree that to be innovative doesn't mean having to create a new product from scratch. West Michigan businesses have built upon existing ideas for years, infusing the marketplace with new products and new ways of doing business.
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It's safe to say America has a history of cultivating innovation. However, defining and measuring innovation is not always so easy, especially in the information age. A New York Times article from earlier this year even addressed how tricky it is to rank countries by their capacity for innovation, as both definitions and methods vary widely. The same trickiness applies when trying to measure innovation on a smaller scale.
"People tend to think innovation, and they're thinking that's Alexander Graham Bell inventing the telephone -- but really it's not," said Ron Kitchens, CEO of Southwest Michigan First in Kalamazoo. "The guys at Google didn't invent the Internet, and they didn't invent search engines. They innovated on the principles of search engines and came up with a different model."
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