Housing developers, just like firms from other industries, are facing competition and pressure to provide better quality products and services to improve speed in the market, organizational agility and innovation. Trade liberalization and rapid fall in communication costs, global communications, technological and scientific understanding, and the increasing knowledge and demand from clients are some of the reasons why innovation is even more urgent today. Innovation has been recognized as a prerequisite for better satisfaction of consumer needs, to stay ahead of the competitors, explore new markets, and is vital for firm survival and growth. This recognition has spurred numerous studies in many disciplines such as marketing, sociology, psychology, management and economics. The capacity of the firm to innovate has also brought about other research interests. Subsequently, there is diverse understanding of these two constructs by scholars in various fields, resulting in various definitions and inconsistent terminologies. The lack of consistent terminology has resulted in interchangeable uses of the constructs of innovation and innovativeness. This conceptual paper seeks to discuss the difference between innovation and innovativeness, and it also suggests the antecedent relationship between the two constructs.

A crystal clear understanding of the relationship and difference between innovation and innovativeness is imperative for researchers, policymakers and managers of large and small firms in housing industry. Lack of a clear understanding between the two constructs can influence the focus of innovation studies. For this reason, Garcia and Calantone (2002) noted that the lack of consistent terminology results in the interchangeable use of constructs of innovation and innovativeness. As a result of inconsistency in defining these constructs, there have been studies which deliver inconsistent and sometimes conflicting results. For this reason, it is important that researchers recognize the distinction between these two constructs. Also Wolfe (1994) noted that firm innovativeness has been studied in a variety of ways, and the results were found to be inconsistent.

The proliferation of innovation research began during the early 1960s and continues to advance. The focus of innovation research during the 1970s, like any other specialized field of management research, was on conceptualization and theory building. In that period, the studies were more of a descriptive nature, analyzing the association between various contextual factors and characteristics of organization. In the 1980s and 1990s, the interest of scholars in innovation research led to the broadening of innovation theory and offered prescriptions towards designing innovative organizations.

Architecture Journal, Organizational Innovation, Antecedent Relationship, Organizational Innovation, Management Research, Economic Development, Intangible Assets, Technical Innovation, Industrial Organization, Nontechnical Services, Marketing Services, Business Systems, , Marketing Methods.