Call it innovation, creativity, imagination, cutting edge, paradigm shift, or any other term for new information, an assessment of innovation may now impact the final decision on awarding grants to investigators. What exactly is innovation and how does the reviewer perceive innovation in the research approach? Procedures, the approach, and innovation all have nuances in the grant application. This paper includes examples of all three grant application components in laymen's and scientific terms to demonstrate and investigate further their use in the grant application.