Seminar paper from the year 2002 in the subject Business economics - Miscellaneous, grade: 1.9 (B+), University of Manchester (Manchester School of Management), 49 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: This paper will address and highlight the importance of innovation as a driving factor of economic change. It will be shown that innovation is crucial to the competitiveness both at the micro- and at the macro-level of companies and nations respectively. While limited in scope and certainly not claiming comprehensiveness, it attempts however to highlight the main issues in the innovation debate within these dimensions. Specifically, chapter two will offer a brief but thorough overview of existing definitions of innovation. Chapter three will link innovation to economic change, with a brief discussion of the concepts of creative destruction and dominant designs. Chapter four and five will highlight the significance of innovation at the firm and the national level respectively. Finally, chapter six will summarise the main findings of this paper.