Semantic status of the concepts «innovation», «innovation process», «innovative product» (methodological aspect)

The paper deals with the semantic roots of such concepts as «innovation», «innovation process», «innovative product»; reasons are given for the necessity of looking for criteria of distinguishing innovations from pseudoinnovations. The author’s version of defining the above-mentioned concepts from the perspective of the theory of the subject of labour is presented. The «innovation» concept can be used in cases when consumer-cost and cost process chains are designed with regard for technical and technological, economic, social and ecological components both at the level of tactical aims (obtaining a product with a parameter required by the society) and at the level of strategic aims (obtaining a product the production of which causes minimum damage to the biosphere). The «innovation process» concept can be used referring to life cycles in which, starting from the product of nature (the object of research), through intermediate stages at which the technological waste is utilized to the product of nature when the final industrial and household products out of use are added to the biogeochemical Earth cycles. The «innovative product» concept can be used to denote the final products of material production that find practical application in the achievement of the required technical and technological, economic, social and ecological effects and taking measures to utilize the by-products during the life cycle and at the final stage through the connection of the ballast substrate to the biogeochemical Earth cycles.