Who innovates?

Who innovates? Traditional answer: companies. All traditional literature and policies regarding innovation take this as a starting point. In most countries the Ministry of Economic Affairs is in the lead in creating innovation policy. Academic literature regards innovation as an economic phenomenon (following Schumpeter, Porter, etc), including the "market failure" paradigm. Popular literature as The Economist and Business Week spend much attention on the topic. Strange... Innovation is a multi and inter-disciplinary topic that touches disciplines as culture, social behavior, technology, marketing, governance, legal frameworks, etc. etc. Here some non traditional examples of innovaters

1 Governments innovate
Really? Yes. Governments are trying to be more transparenr, engage and inform citizens, increase efficiency, decrease bureacracy, improve their services and use the knowledge of the crowd for policy making.  Some examples: Voting by Iphone; using open source software in government and government crowd sourcing.

2 Individuals innovate
Ever heard of DIY? I am not talking about home improvement, I talk about advanced science and creating new businesses. With internet as a tool, can you see the difference between a multinational and a self-employed person? Open source (software) is a group of individual innovating together.

3 Dont forget NGO's
Many NGO's are rethinking their strategies. How to link, engage, activate and inform donors. How to decrease overhead costs. How to increase, measure and publish the impact? How to focus on core competences and link and outsource to other organisations?
Examples: Writing letters for Amnesty International is now sms or e-mail; webcam of oil-spill or using social media to create protest movements. Select in which firm you want to invest to using micro-credits. And what about Wikileaks?