The International Handbook on Innovation

Citation

Henry, C. (2004), "The International Handbook on Innovation", International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behavior & Research, Vol. 10 No. 4, pp. 297-298. https://doi.org/10.1108/13552550410544259

The International Handbook on Innovation is a comprehensive account of contemporary innovation fundamentals, techniques, models and tools. As an international edited text, the book presents a wide range of perspectives on innovation by leading specialists from around the world.

The focus of the book is on understanding the multidisciplinary and multifaceted nature of innovation and, in this respect, it should attract a wide audience – postgraduate students of innovation, entrepreneurship and new product development; as well as academics; practitioners and R & D specialists. An interesting feature of the book is its multidisciplinary approach to innovation and the inclusion of how innovation occurs and is managed in remote disciplines. In this regard, the book broadens its appeal to those studying psychology, management, education and economics.

The book is structured in XV parts. Following a general introduction in part I, part II contains a collection of contributions (15 in total) dealing with the nature of innovation. Part III contains a single chapter on the individual differences in innovative ability, while parts IV through VI deal with the development and assessment of innovation (ten chapters). In part VII, the issue of how innovation occurs in different domains, such as science, technology, poetry and music, is examined. Part VIII (seven chapters) considers the basic approach to understanding innovation in a social context and includes an interesting discussion on the role of venture capital in innovation. Parts IX to XII deal with innovation in social institutions, management, leadership and marketing, respectively (14 chapters). Examples of innovation policy and practices from around the world are presented in part XIII (11 chapters), while part XIV considers innovations of the future in science and technology. The book concludes in part XV with a single chapter which considers the common elements of the various accounts of innovation presented in the previous chapters.

While some of the contributed chapters in this book are quite complex, extremely specialist in nature and take a niche view of innovation, others have a broader appeal, dealing with the concept of innovation at a more basic level. It should be noted that the book's price (in excess of $250) and sheer bulk (in excess of 1,000 pages) may restrict its purchase by individual students, however, The International Handbook on Innovation is a must for all good libraries and research centres. This book should be viewed as an invaluable, essential reference text for serious innovation scholars.