R&D and Innovation Activities – Search for Better Definitions and an Economic-Historical Approach*

The paper examines the challenges social scientists face when analysing innovation, especially R&D and innovation activities of firms, i.e. their strategies in typical stages of an innovation process in a defined economy. The motivation behind is to describe properly the innovation activities of firms in the proper economic-historical context. There are many ways innovation can be understood (inter-culturally/inter-nationally) and different ways in which firms, institutions, and governments organize and undertake innovation activities. Entrepreneurs and multinationals are an essential part of market mechanism and innovation is, ex ante, beneficial for them. There are many theories and the current ones demand interdisciplinary approach. It is due to the dynamic nature of innovation and the global context – economic crises, the Internet. At the end of the paper current definition misunderstanding in social sciences is discussed and a better understanding is introduced, which builds upon the simultaneous nature and almost interchangeable relationship between innovation, imitation and invention.