To Invest And To Innovate Today: Open Question

I was thinking about two key words: "to invest” and “to innovate” so I decided to check in the dictionary.

I took the Oxford Advanced Dictionary (7th Edition) and found the meaning of “to invest”:

To buy properties, shares in a company in the hope of making a profit. To spend time, energy, effort on something that you think is good or useful.

I verified the same word (verb) on Thesaurus and this is what I found:

Expend money with the expectation of achieving a profit or material result by putting it into financial schemes, shares, or property, or by using it to develop a commercial venture.

This is what Thesaurus says about “Investment”:

Act of devoting time, effort, or energy to a particular undertaking with the expectation of a worthwhile result.

I finally checked the meaning of “To innovate" in the Oxford Advanced Dictionary (7th Edition) to find this:

To introduce new things, ideas or ways of doing something.

This is what Thesaurus says about “To innovate":

Make changes in something established, esp. by introducing new methods, ideas, or products.

It seems that “investing” and “investment” are both activities that generate an expected worthwhile result, that create something useful, that develop something possibly good. While “innovation” is the ability of the investor to profitably use elements that are available in his/her daily life to redesign, to reimagine and to improve the reality.

My final thought is that the true essense of “innovation” is made primarily by the act of reimagining, rethinking our simple daily reality in a much more meaningful way. The use and the deployment of technology (software, connections, hardware, ...) should remain be the secondary element which serves and supports the act of thinking and reimagining a new meaningful way of life.

If this is so, I wonder why so many companies are buying technology just to continue to do business, to produce things, to provide services in the same old way?

What would be your answer?