Think about the last thing you bought that felt new. Chances are it was not new to the world at all. It was a phone with a better camera, a drink in a new flavour, or a familiar service you can now order from an app. Truly new things, like the first telephone, are rare. Improved things appear every day. Entrepreneurs need to understand the difference, because most successful ventures, including the one you will plan in this course, are built on improving something rather than inventing it from nothing.
Invention versus innovation
An invention is a product, process or idea that did not exist before. It is the first of its kind. An innovation is a new or improved version of something that already exists, or a new way of making, delivering or using it. Inventions answer the question "What has never been made?" Innovations answer the question "How can this be made better, cheaper, easier or more fun?"
- Velcro: a hook-and-loop fastener, created by Swiss engineer George de Mestral after studying how burrs stuck to fabric and fur
- Basketball: a new game invented in 1891 by Canadian James Naismith
- The Internet: a new way for computers everywhere to share information, developed by many researchers over decades
- Coloured ketchup: the same condiment, made green or purple to appeal to kids
- Cellphones: the telephone, made wireless and portable
- Flat-screen TVs: the television, made thinner, lighter and sharper
Canadian inventions and innovations meet needs and wants
Every invention or innovation that sells does so because it satisfies a need (something people must have, such as health, safety or food) or a want (a particular way people prefer to satisfy a need). Canada has produced many well-known examples. Looking at what each one satisfied shows you how to think about your own venture: start with the need or want, not with the gadget.
| Example | Invention or innovation? | Need or want it satisfies |
|---|---|---|
| Goalie mask | Invention (protective face mask for hockey goalies) | Safety: protecting a goalie's face from pucks. Montreal Canadiens goalie Jacques Plante made the mask a regular part of NHL play in 1959. |
| Pablum | Invention (a precooked, vitamin-rich cereal for babies) | Health and nutrition for infants. It was developed by doctors at Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children in the 1930s. |
| Insulin treatment | Invention (a medical treatment) | Health: keeping people with diabetes alive. It was developed at the University of Toronto in the early 1920s. |
| Paint roller | Innovation (an improvement on the paintbrush) | Convenience: painting large walls faster and more evenly. Norman Breakey of Toronto is credited with it in the 1940s. |
| Fox 40 whistle | Innovation (a whistle with no ball, or "pea", inside) | Reliability for referees and lifeguards: a whistle that does not jam or fail when wet. |
From invention or innovation to venture
An invention on its own earns nothing. It becomes a business only when an entrepreneur organizes the money, people and marketing needed to get it to customers. Canadian entrepreneurs have done this in different ways.
- Fox 40: Ron Foxcroft, a basketball referee from Hamilton, Ontario, was frustrated by whistles with a cork ball inside that could stick and fail at key moments. He developed a pea-less whistle and built the Hamilton-based company Fox 40 around it in the late 1980s. A small, everyday frustration in his own work became a product sold to referees, coaches and safety workers.
- Cirque du Soleil: founded in Quebec in 1984 by a group of street performers that included Guy Laliberté, it reinvented the circus. It kept acrobats and clowns, removed animal acts entirely, and added original music, costumes and storylines borrowed from theatre. Nothing about the circus was invented from scratch. The innovation was combining familiar parts in a new way for a new audience of adults willing to pay theatre prices.
- Bombardier: Joseph-Armand Bombardier of Quebec developed vehicles that could travel over snow, and in the late 1950s his company launched the Ski-Doo, a small personal snowmobile. The need was getting around in deep snow; the venture grew from meeting it.
