Innovation as a knowledge‐based outcome

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to provide clarity to the concept of innovation and its various definitions. Design/methodology/approach The article reviews the innovation literature and proposes that innovation has been conceptualized either from a process or from an outcome perspective. Also, the authors show that there is a substantive difference between innovation seen in the traditional innovation literature and innovation as conceived in the knowledge management literature. Findings The paper proposes a general framework to categorize the existing views of innovation and show that innovation as an outcome has not been clearly defined from a knowledge perspective. To address this gap, the authors develop a new definition of an innovation outcome based on knowledge elements. Research limitations/implications The research lays the groundwork for more comprehensive methods of measuring innovation and innovativeness, which is particularly useful for the study of service innovation. Practical implications The framework and definition expand the ability of managers to measure and understand the key factors of innovation. Originality/value The research contributes to the literature by developing a comprehensive knowledge‐based, outcome‐oriented definition of innovation.