Citing examples ranging from Netflix's by-mail DVD rental service to Toyota's Prius hybrid automobile, Renee James, corporate vice president and general manager of the Software & Solutions Group at Intel, stressed the importance of finding ideas to leverage inventions.

"First of all, innovation enables a larger population of people to take advantage of something more simply and more conveniently than they have in the past," James said, quoting from "The Innovator's Dilemma," by Clayton Christensen.

The disrupting of markets, reshaping of business models, and facilitating of existing patterns of consumer behavior are also key factors in recognizing innovation, she said.

Netflix, for example, found a new way to rent DVDs to the marketplace, James noted. "It's really quite amazing because they did not invent anything," she said.

Toyota has had the Prius on the market since 1997, but the combination of new technology with a brand promise of environmental correctness has made the car successful, James said. "Their innovation was taking this idea and making it cost-effective," she said.