Last month, I had the chance to sit down and talk to Farhat Ali, the previous President and CEO of Fujitsu America, as well as a member of the Princeton Class of 1977. Our talk spanned everywhere from topics like combining business school with a technical degree, to appropriately managing a startup. However, I think one of the most interesting pieces of insight I got from Farhat was his explanation of the difference between “invention” and “innovation.”
Strictly speaking, an invention is some novel creation — U.S. patent law defines it as “a new, useful process, machine, improvement, etc., that did not exist previously and that is recognized as the product of some unique intuition or genius, as distinguished from ordinary mechanical skill or craftsmanship.”