UNDERSTANDING THE GAP BETWEEN CONSUMER EXPECTATIONS AND PERCEIVED BUSINESS INNOVATION: EVIDENCE FROM LOCAL BUSINESSES IN UZBEKISTAN

Innovation is often seen as the main force that moves economies beyond simple growth toward real development. But what counts as "innovative" is not obvious. Philip Crosby (1979) once said that quality is "ballet, not hockey." He meant that quality is a matter of interpretation, not something that can be measured. And the same is true of innovation. Schumpeter (1934) makes a related point, but from the producer's side. From the Schumpeterian perspective, innovation is usually led by producers, not consumers. In his view, it is the producer who creates change first while consumers are taught to want things they did not ask for. The Oslo Manual supports this idea from a measurement perspective. It describes innovation as a subjective construct, meaning that how it is measured can change depending on who is answering and what context they are in (Galindo-Rueda and Van Cruysen, 2016, as cited in OECD/Eurostat, 2018).