Conclusion

This free course aimed to provide you with an overview and introduction to the range of related concepts, ideas and debates that enable you to develop a critical understanding of technological innovation and management.

Throughout this course we have linked to external resources, as well as included a range of activities, which should have served to illustrate, think through and reinforce how the various topics apply to your own situation or to one with which you are familiar. One feature of studying innovation, as distinct from the technological disciplines which generate much innovation, is that it is a fundamentally social and economic field. Consequently, similar phenomena may have different meanings or implications in different contexts: What is ‘old hat’ in one area of the economy may well be a radical novelty in another. Thinking about the relevance of the concepts that we have introduced to your own field, and reading about contemporary thinking and practice, will deepen your understanding of these ideas.