Horace Dediu is trying to convince us all to accept a new word of his creation, innoveracy, to aid in explaining new products like Apple’s AAPL +1.14% iPhone. Truly ground breaking new products, ones that are different from novelty, creation and invention. And there’s much to like in at least part of his argument. For example, the insistence that inventions and or innovations need to pass the market test so that we can find out whether they truly are adding value. However, the coinage will make economists a bit twitchy (and possibly etymologists too) for we already use “innovation” in economics in two different ways. Of course, being economists the word is used in two contradictory ways as well, dependent upon context.
Read more about how you can use the iPhone to differentiate between invention and innovation here.
