The Importance of Innovation (graded) Why is innovation so important for firms to compete?

Companies always try to produce competitive products, provide competitive services to survive and prosper in this global and severely competitive market.
In my opinion in today’s economy in all industries the technological innovation is highly important. A product produced months ago can already be considered old, useless and not up to date. For example Anti Virus Software- imagine if you have bought company “A” Anti Virus software and it can’t battle the new virus appeared a month ago.
I think that entrepreneurs are more innovative than companies. The latter to survive in this global and competitive market need innovation more than ever, this is why sometimes many big companies “buy” Innovations from entrepreneurs or smaller firms.

We may probably take ActaCell as a relevant example. On Dec 15 they were awarded a grant by government that supports innovative technologies. I have found an article on gigaom.com by Josie Garthwaite Dec 15 2010http://gigaom.com/cleantech/actacell-charges-ahead-with-new-way-to-make-batteries/ , I think it is a good example of standing out above other products. They have invented cost effective products. Honestly it was very interesting to do the Apple case study and I agree that Apple is a trend setter, however I would say that the Innovation also led Apple to failures as well. Apple almost always had good products - very innovative and state of the art ones , however because of the price they some tines would remain on shelves. Apple is the best example. when started the innovation made the company however later pricey innovations broke the company, and later when Steven Jobs already had become very mature things changed drastically and company is successful till today By the way I read on http://gigaom.com/ that Verzion announced Iphone for its networks.