Ritzer wbeost011.tex V1 - 07/22/2021 5:05 P.M. Page 1 Technological Innovation MARIO COCCIA CNR – National Research Council of Italy, Italy Introduction Technological innovation plays an important role in society for satisfying needs, achieving goals, and solving problems of adopters directed to supporting corporate, industrial, economic, and social change for competitive advantage of frms and nations, and improving overall human progress (Arthur, 2009; Coccia, 2019a; Dosi, 1988; Sahal, 1981). Abernathy and Clark (1985, p. 4f) state that: innovation is not a unifed phenomenon: some innovations disrupt, destroy and make obso- lete established competence; others refne and improve. Further, … diferent kinds of inno- vation require diferent kinds of organizational environments and diferent managerial skills. … An innovation is the initial market introduction of a new product or process whose design departs radically from past practice. It is derived from advances in science, and its introduction makes existing knowledge in that application obsolete. It creates new markets, supports freshly articulated user needs in the new functions it ofers, and in practice demands new channels of distribution and afermarket support. Technological innovation is underpinned in tech- nology, which can be defned as a complex system composed of more than one entity or subsystem of technologies and a relationship that holds between each entity and at least one other entity in the system for achieving specifc goals (see Coccia, 2019a, 2019b; Coccia and Watts, 2020). New technology is driven by inventions of new things and new ways of doing things (originating in advances in basic and applied science) that are transformed into usable innovations in markets to satisfy needs, achieve goals, solve problems of adopters that take advantage of important Te Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology. Edited by George Ritzer and Chris Rojek. © 2021 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Published 2021 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. DOI: 10.1002/9781405165518.wbeost011.pub2 opportunities, or to cope with consequential problems/environmental threats (Coccia, 2019a, 2020c). Technological innovation is characterized by various typologies that can be categorized on an increasing scale of change and socioeconomic impact, given by (Coccia, 2005a, 2020a): incre- mental innovations (progressive modifcations of existing products and/or processes, such as detergents for dark clothes); radical innovations (a drastic change of existing products/processes, or creation of new products to satisfy needs or solve problems in society, such as contact lenses); tech- nological systems (a cluster of innovations that are technically and economically inter-related, e.g., nanotechnology or biotechnology); technological revolutions (pervasive changes in technology afecting many branches of the economy, such as general-purpose technologies of information and communication technologies or artifcial intelligence having a technological dynamism and a pervasive use in a wide range of sectors; cf., Coccia, 2012, 2015a, 2015b, 2016b, 2017a, 2017b, 2018a, 2018b, 2019c, 2020a, 2020d, 2020e; Coccia and Wang, 2015). Technological innovations generate technological change that is the progress of technology from a system T 1 to T 2 , … , T i , … , T n by incremental, radical, and disruptive innovations for achieving consequential goals and/or fostering economic and social change, as schematically represented in Figure 1. Te characteristics of the pattern of technological innovations are the origins of technological inno- vation and difusion of technological innovation. Tese are the main phases that support the evolution of technology. Origins of Technological Innovations Coccia (2016a, 2017c) maintains that technologi- cal innovation has a problem-driven origin. Usher (1954) explains this characteristic as follows: 1. Perception of the problem: an incomplete pat- tern in need of resolution is recognized.