Innovation is synonymous with the new and, in business, involves launching a new idea or product. Not for nothing do we now relate innovation to Research and Development: RDI. However, the globalized word that we now live in has given a new meaning to the word innovation: change. Innovation, fuelled by the creativity generated by extensive network connections, has become the engine of transformation. In a knowledge economy like the one that we live in, innovation has taken over from the industrial lever of the twentieth century. If the wealth of industrial society was manufactured capital, post-industrial society is based on knowledge, imagination and human capital.

This is why experts at UPF Barcelona School of Management and UPF-IDEC are using this, the fifth issue of Quorum, to provide a new perspective on innovation. We will look at innovation’s relation to market value, a case study of an innovative professional project between business and university, innovation and the digital arts, imagining new forms of life as a way to creating brands, paths for creative processes and an economic analysis of the profitability of investing in R&D. Student’s opinions are added to these diverse, mutidisciplinary perspectives. We invite you to read and to make your voice heard.