Who Is Innovation for?

Innovation pertains to every aspect of life and impacts in some way on every individual. Innovation and the means by which it is achieved through scientific research should ultimately then be a societal activity. The collective needs of society may be addressed as market opportunitiesMarketopportunity/ies for innovation but despite this public researchPublicresearch globally is dominated by science-supplySciencesupply, with agendas dictated by scientific curiosity, interest and questions of technical merit rather than public need. The question of who innovation is for then needs to consider the type, role, motivations and training of researchers, approaches to and organisation of research, and how its categorisation can influence its delivery to its stakeholders—to society. What emerges from such a societal-centred approach is that interdisciplinarity more readily becomes ‘a given’ and the priority needs of the ‘customer’ more self-evident.