E-Government as an Innovative Product: Theories and Case Study - Information and Communication Technologies in Public Administration - page 126

(Reddick & Turner, 2012). To this end, the remainder of this chapter is organized
as follows: In Section 6.2, a corresponding literature review is performed. Section
6.3 presents findings from international e-strategies and a case study and compares
them with innovation management perspectives. Section 6.4 contains the conclu-
sions and some future thoughts.
6.2 Background
This section outlines theoretical aspects, which concern innovation, innovation
management techniques, e-government and innovation, and e-government devel-
opment. Although the corresponding literature review is not complete, findings
show the interconnection between innovation and e-government.
6.2.1 Innovation
Innovation can be defined as the first attempt to carry out an invention into prac-
tice (Fagerberg, 2004), whereas invention is limited to describing the generation
of the idea of a new product or process (Howells, 2005). To this end, innovation
concerns the practical refinement and development of an original invention into a
usable technique or product or a process, in which creativity is applied to every facet
of an organization's value chain, from beginning to end, to develop new and better
ways of creating value for customers (Maital & Seshadri, 2007).
According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
(2005) and its Oslo Manual, there are various types of innovation, which vary
from products to processes, marketing techniques, or organizational methods.
Moreover, technological innovation differs from social innovation because the
first is based on specific discoveries, whereas the second concerns extensive
changes (i.e., mail, telephone, etc.; Maital & Seshadri, 2007). Additionally, inno-
vation is distinguished to sustaining and disruptive proportionally on customer
demand. According to the degree of the invention's novelty, innovations vary
from incremental (when they are continuous) to radical (when a product series
change) to systemic (when the entire production technique changes). Finally,
innovation can be open when it is developed outsourced or closed when it is devel-
oped insourced.
Innovation comes to solve particularly defined problems (Maital & Seshadri,
2007), where the idea is the smallest part of the innovation process. Its success is
supported—but not guaranteed—by appropriate management, funding, and mar-
keting efforts, while it has to balance properly between technology push and market
pull. Porter and Schwab (2008) are only some of the active scholars in the innova-
tion domain who realize the potential that innovation has for economic growth.
A comparison between various countries (Porter & Schwab, 2008) justifies that