A gem of a post I’ve come across:

• Novelty: Something new
• Creation: Something new and valuable
• Invention: Something new, having potential value through utility
• Innovation: Something new and uniquely useful

[…]

To be innovative is very difficult, but because of the difficulty, being innovative is usually well rewarded. Indeed, it might be easier to identify innovations simply by their rewards. It’s almost a certainty that any great business is predicated on an innovation and that the lack of a reward in business means that some aspect of the conditions of innovation were not met.

The causal, if-and-only-if connection with reward is what should be the innovation litmus test. If something fails to change the world (and hence is unrewarded) you can be pretty sure it was not innovative enough.

A lot of us confuse innovation with novelty.