Table 1.

Assumptions and observations about core innovation concepts

Concept	Linear causal thinking	Systems thinking
Ideas	One invention, operationalized	Reinvention, proliferation, reimplementation, discarding, and termination
Innovator(s)	An entrepreneur with a fixed set of full-time people over time	Many entrepreneurs and other players, sometimes on-track and sometimes distracted, fluidly engaging and disengaging over time in a variety of roles
Transaction	A defined network of people or firms working out details of an idea between themselves	Expanding, contracting, and flexing networks of partisan stakeholders who converge and diverge on ideas
Context	The environment provides opportunities and constraints on the innovation process	The innovation process is captured by political and cultural features, and creates opponents or is constrained by multiple enacted environments
Process	Simple, orderly, cumulative sequences of stages or phases	Multiple messy, imprecise journeys; many divergent, parallel and convergent paths; some related, others not
Outcomes	Final result predictable; a stable new order comes into being	Final result indeterminate; many in-process perturbations, assessments and spinoffs; integration of any new order with old orders

Source: Modified from Van de Ven et al. [15]