A review of contemporary innovation literature: A Schumpeterian perspective

Adopting a Schumpeterian perspective, this article reports a survey on contemporary innovation literature from the 1950s to the present. By sorting innovation research into three main schools the capability school, the corporate entrepreneurship school, and the cultural school tins article discusses the nature of innovation, the inherent logic of innovation, relationship among members, focal concerns, and apprehension of time of the three innovation schools, and addresses three perennial issues of innovation: institutionalizing vs. de-institutionalizing innovation; technology push vs. market pull; and incrementalism vs. radicalism. Finally, this paper suggests that innovation research communities go a step further to broaden the perspective and integrate the literature in the search for a humanistic theory of innovation.