Understanding innovation based on company optics: interpretation mistakes on the types of innovation developed

The objective of this research is to identify whether products, processes, organizational and marketing practices, introduced or implemented by companies, can be considered to be innovations. Closed-ended questions concerning the type of innovation introduced or implemented were contrasted with the descriptions of innovations developed among a sample of 1770 companies in the manufacturing, service and commerce sector, as well as the mining and quarrying sector. Companies were classified into five groups according to the type of innovation that was introduced or implemented: (i) companies that understand the concept of innovation; (ii) companies that understand the concept of product innovation; (iii) companies that understand the concept of process innovation; (iv) companies that understand the process of organizational innovation, and (v) companies that understand the concept of marketing innovation. The results show that eight out of 10 companies understand what it means to innovate with companies in the manufacturing sector being the ones that best understand this concept. Likewise, the type of innovation that is best understood throughout all sectors is marketing innovation. At the same time, companies present three errors at the time of identifying their innovations: companies that think they have innovated but have not done so, companies that think they have not innovated but actually have, and companies that think they innovated in a specific type of innovation, but instead innovated in another.