Progettare l'innovazione

Abstract

Nowadays the aptitude to design and define technological, organizational and social innovation is a key element in the public and private sector. Innovation must be designed and practiced with structured approaches and strong ability to enhance it: giving the right weight to knowledge and skills developed by people within organizations, enhancing the so called “intangible assets”, a term that indicates resources not incorporated in physical or financial assets and which still presents various problems of recognition. A significant contribution to the management of innovation and the related enhancement of knowledge comes from the practice of libraries that demonstrate a growing interest and widespread aptitude for experimenting in these fields. This is due both to their mission profile, focused on access and information management, and to innovative processes. This article aims to make a general framework of the notion of innovation, investigating its historical-cultural origin and subsequent evolutions; examining in depth current approaches and methodologies that support it; illustrating particular cases and their enhancement in libraries and on the whole sector of access to information.