"Innovation is a new idea, more effective device or process. Innovation can be viewed as the application of better solutions that meet new requirements, unarticulated needs, or existing market needs. This is accomplished through more effective products, processes, services, technologies, or ideas that are readily available to markets, governments and society. The term innovation can be defined as something original and more effective and, as a consequence, new, that "breaks into" the market or society."
While a novel device is often described as an innovation, in economics, management science, and other fields of practice and analysis, innovation is generally considered to be a process that brings together various novel ideas in a way that they have an impact on society.
According to Peter F. Drucker the general sources of innovations are different changes in industry structure, in market structure, in local and global demographics, in human perception, mood and meaning, in the amount of already available scientific knowledge, etc.
Another source of innovation, only now becoming widely recognised, is end-user innovation. This is where an agent (person or company) develops an innovation for their own (personal or in-house) use because existing products do not meet their needs. MIT economist Eric von Hippel has identified end-user innovation as, by far, the most important and critical in his classic book on the subject, Sources of Innovation.
The robotics engineer Joseph F. Engelberger asserts that innovations require only three things: A recognised need, Competent people with relevant technology, and Financial support. However, innovation processes usually involve: identifying customer needs, macro and meso trends, developing competences, and finding financial support.
The innovation Lab is a focus initiative. It has a great vision to dedicate self in solving socio economic challenges by engineering and technologies. The mission of the initiative is to build a dedicated, skilled group of researcher [scholars] in the field of engineering and technologies, who can participate voluntarily in the social cause, and identify potential challenges, define the problem in totality and work in the field of engineering and technology to bring solutions, which eventually solve or bring a direction towards the solutions.
The Innovation Lab is a novelty within the institution, which provide a conducive environment and adequate infrastructure to the researchers for experimenting and exploring wide spectrum of possibilities to design a probable solution using engineering and technology. In the present context, we would gravitate most of the solution to leverage modern information technology, mobility, Internet and social media to be an important enabler in the process.