Improvement, to me, is the result of activities taken with the intent simply survive within the marketplace (i.e., keep up with competitors).
Innovation, on the other hand, is the result of activities taken with the intent to be a market leader (i.e., distinguish oneself from the competitors).
I once did a training sesson on the concept of Routine Management and several processes within it - Standardization, Training, Adherence to Standards, Results, and Failure Analysis.
To help reinforce the information - and to ensure I wasn't simply talking for 4 hours - there was an exercise that included several "rounds" of the same activity. But each time, a new concept was introduced and applied to the next round.
In this training session, I ended up having 4 teams in a hotel conference room. Not a lot of room, but enough for the exercise to be conducted.
3 teams were set-up, parallel to each other and separated from each other by a row of tables. The 4th team was in the back of the room, away from the other 3 teams.
The 3 teams that were together, seemed to improve together..."benchmarking" from each other and ending up with very similar results - including improved performance with each round.
The 4th team became creative and focused and energized and excited about what they were doing and totally innovated their way to achieving the goal of the class. They also "won" the exercise by having the best results.
That was an unexpected outcome of the class, but very much appreciated by me!