The concept of innovation and the construction industry

Even though innovation is a term present within every sector of human activity, the focus of this article is ¿¿ innovation within the construction sector. Several classifications of innovation are presented; aiming to shed some light on the complexity associated with innovation and revealing the stages that a firm has to go through for its adoption and implementation - a task quite difficult for a construction firm, especially an SME. A better understanding of these processes will help to identify the driving forces that transform a need, via innovation, to an improved product or process. However, the literature study has revealed a significant bias towards the larger companies. Thus there is a lack of information and advice for the smaller companies. How will a construction SME increase its ability to adopt and implement successfully innovation? Could the participation in a cluster be a way to succeed this? This remains to be further investigated.