Is Easyjet an innovative company? Along with Ryanair, the company transformed the European aviation market. But everything the company did was already done by someone else, and the entire product and process were close to those South West Airlines had pioneered in the US.
There is no purpose in arguing about what is the correct definition of innovation. What matters is that people understand what they are saying when they talk to each other. The frequent, often unnoticed, shift between wide and narrow definitions of innovation may be seriously misleading. Generalities about the importance of innovation in creating competitive advantage in business are translated into specific policies to subsidise research and development and the promotion of particular kinds of scientific education.
Such policies are described as “techno nationalism” in an important recent book called The Venturesome Economy by Amar Bhidé. Techno nationalism is derived from the belief that economic growth depends on high technology and that we will benefit fully from it only if it is our own high technology. Techno nationalism is as common in Europe, which believes it is falling behind, as in America, which fears it may be overtaken. But the fear that western economic prosperity is endangered by China's flood of engineering graduates is not only exaggerated: it may be the reverse of the truth.