> Over time I become more and more convinced that the market doesn't produce (much) real innovation.
This is something I've researched a bit in the past. It ends up being a case of semantics. The market produces plenty of innovation but not much basic research; whether it encourages invention is ambiguous.
These three terms (innovation, invention, discovery) are well-defined in the academic literature; typically innovation is the only act of progress that can be monetized. Innovation occurs both on a technical level (hey, this transistor doo-hickey can be put in microchips!) and procedural (hey, organizing in an assembly line increases the speed with which we can make model T's!). Invention is creating something new from known principles, innovation is applying an invention, and discovery is finding previously unknown principles.
This is something I've researched a bit in the past. It ends up being a case of semantics. The market produces plenty of innovation but not much basic research; whether it encourages invention is ambiguous.
These three terms (innovation, invention, discovery) are well-defined in the academic literature; typically innovation is the only act of progress that can be monetized. Innovation occurs both on a technical level (hey, this transistor doo-hickey can be put in microchips!) and procedural (hey, organizing in an assembly line increases the speed with which we can make model T's!). Invention is creating something new from known principles, innovation is applying an invention, and discovery is finding previously unknown principles.