Business Week is devoting its entire Oct. 11 issue -- its 75th anniversary issue – to the “Innovation Economy.” There’s a *lot* of stuff here, covering pretty much the entire space – R&D, technology, copyright, the management of innovation, global innovation, and so forth. All of it is accessible free online (you go, Business Week!).

My take overall is that this is well-done, though when you read the articles carefully there’s still more of a focus on innovation-as-new-products-and-new-technologies and not as much on innovation throughout the company (see the Doblin Group's 10 Types of Innovation for more on this theme).

Here are the articles I found the most thought-provoking:

Building An Idea Factory

An examination of innovation as a management process, though still more focused on the innovation of product and service offerings. Quotes Andrew Hargadon, Henry Chesbrough, and Clayton Christensen, each of whom has seen a lot of IdeaFlow pixels devoted to their work.

This article discusses the “old” idea of innovation -- constant experimentation, willingness to fail, and setting big goals – as well as some of the new ideas -- opening company procedures and research to the outside, and tapping customers’ expertise in product and service development.

One great quote: “Innovation nowadays is more like improvisation in jazz than playing out a score that’s already written,” Karl Ronn, vice president o P&G’s home-care division.

How to Sharpen the Innovative Edge

Here’s a quote from this commentary by Michael J. Mandel:

“Part of the difficulty in identifying the right policy is that the innovation economy has many moving parts. The government, universities, big companies, small startups, venture-capital firms, stock market investors -- each has a distinct role. And innovation has gone global, bringing in even more players.

There is one guidepost amid the confusing trends: the enormous and surprising success of the American innovation machine in recent years. In the late 1980s and the early 1990s, virtually all economic forecasters wrote off the U.S. as a mature, slow-growth laggard that eventually would be passed by more vibrant economies in Europe and Japan. Yet when the Internet revolution arrived, it was U.S. entrepreneurs who proved far more nimble and adept in converting ideas into products. The result was a productivity boom that is still barreling forward.”

Again, there’s more of a focus here on innovation of new products and service offerings than company-wide innovation. Here’s Mandel’s four-point plan for how governments and decision-makers can spur innovation:

1. Invest for the future

2. Take advantage of the global economy

3. Provide the right protection for IP (the “right” protection being that which provides a “proper balance between too much and not enough protection of IP” – something we all dream of, yet no one yet has figured out how to accomplish)

4. Emphasize innovation as a high priority (politically, though you could also say this needs to happen in businesses and universities as well)

Industry and Academia Weigh In

This one features an interview with Sam Palmisano of IBM and Wayne Clough of Georgia Tech, who are heading up something called the “National Innovation Initiative,” which I was not aware of. The online interview is longer than what’s available in print. I was more interested in the NII itself, though, and if you are too, you can find out more about it here.

Scouring the Planet for Brainiacs

This one’s all about global cooperation and innovation networks. "The fallacy of innovation was that it was all about spending on R&D or information technology," says Diana Farrell, director of the McKinsey Global Institute. "Instead, it has more to do with execution and getting products out better and faster."

Again, too much of a focus on product innovation, but it's a good discussion on innovation networks, about which much has been written lately.

Collaborative Innovation and Europe

Suggests that Europe’s historical ability to conduct business across borders will help the European Union ratchet up its innovation efforts.