As I get towards the end of my MBA, the focus of instruction is on innovation. My current class approaches innovation from the perspective of the corporation, that is, corporate entrepreneurship or intrapraneurship.
The prof has suggested that innovation and entrepreneurship, in this context, are synonymous and he will use the terms interchangeably. I resist this idea. Having worked in innovative settings for the last 2 decades that have been anything but entrepreneurial, I think I have a valid perspective. I can see how entrepreneurship doesn't get off the ground without innovation. I don't see how the opposite is true.
One way to think of the differences is to examine their results. Entrepreneurship and innovation both have scorecards, ways of knowing whether the players are winning at the endeavour. For innovation, the metrics are fluency (the total number of ideas produced), and flexibility (the number of categories of ideas that are produced). Entrepreneurship's metrics are reach, reputation, and relationships, all leading to the "bottom line" of revenue. Thus, the effort of these activities leads to results that don't even overlap, let alone coincide.
On a practical level, society doesn't operate as if these two things are the same. As a society, we fund theoretical and exploratory research precisely for this reason. Knowing that innovation can eventually lead to previously unimaginable useful things, we indulge intellectual and academic flights of fancy completely divorced from a commercial motive.
To play devil's advocate, from a corporate perspective, perhaps all innovation is a kind of entrepreneurship. After all, all creativity expressed in the company could change the business. All improvements to business processes, products, joint venture and so on eventually impact the bottom line.
Maybe I just want "entrepreneurship" to signify something more heroic than business as usual.