Critical Studies of Innovation
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Critical Studies of Innovation

Alternative Approaches to the Pro-Innovation Bias

9781785366963 Edward Elgar Publishing
Edited by the late Benoît Godin, formerly Full Professor, Institut National de la Recherche Scientifique, Montréal, Canada and Dominique Vinck, Professor, STS Lab, Institut des Sciences Sociales, University of Lausanne, Switzerland
Publication Date: 2017 ISBN: 978 1 78536 696 3 Extent: 352 pp
Different theories, models and narratives of innovation compete for both legitimacy and authority. However, despite the variations, they all offer a consistent pro-innovation bias, dismissing resistance as irrational, and overlooking the value of non-users and collateral impacts. This book looks at innovation from a different perspective and asks, what has been left out? It offers a reflexive view and invites researchers to consider new avenues of research, through a critique of current representations of innovation.

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Critical Acclaim
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Different theories, models and narratives of innovation compete for both legitimacy and authority. However, despite the variations, they all offer a consistent pro-innovation bias, dismissing resistance as irrational, and overlooking the value of non-users and collateral impacts. This book asks, what has been left out? It offers a reflexive view and invites researchers to consider new avenues of research, through a critique of current representations of innovation.

The chapters provide a different viewpoint on innovation by exploring what has been omitted from traditional innovation studies. The book examines imitation, non-innovative roles, resistance to innovation, slow innovation, the rationale of non-users, failure, withdrawal, collateral impacts and alternative models. Calling for new definitions and frameworks, the editors have created a critical program for innovation studies with new avenues for future research.

Offering state-of-the-art discussion of theories, models, narratives and ideologies of innovation and alternative approaches, this book will be an essential resource for scholars in technology and innovation, management, engineering, political and social sciences. It will also appeal to policy-makers in the science and technology sector.
Critical Acclaim
‘There is much to explore in this volume, and much to look forward to as future scholars build upon it.. . . An interdisciplinary book such as Critical Studies of Innovation is a treasure because wrestling with these unique, and varying, perspectives can yield new insights to the
curious and patient reader.’
– Logan D. A. Williams, Minerva: A Review of Science, Learning and Policy

‘Critical Studies of Innovation is a critically important and seminal work of outstanding scholarship that is unreservedly recommended for both college and university library collections and supplemental studies reading lists.’
– Midwest Book Review

‘This book provides an indispensable collection of insights into the world outside the nimbus of superiority that surrounds innovation to this day. The book is a treasure trove for any student and scholar and a must-have for any library!''
– Foresight
Contributors
Contributors: C. Bagattolli, M.W. Bauer, L. Becerra, K. Berglund, T. Brandão, C. Cañibano, M.-I. Encinar, G. Gaglio, S. Garrido, B. Godin, F. Goulet, J. Juhl, J. Langrish, K.-H. Leitner, F.-F. Muñoz, S.M. Pfotenhauer, B. Segercrantz, J. Söderberg, K.-E. Sveiby, H. Thomas, D. Vinck, L. Vinsel

Contents
Contents:

Innovation: From the Forbidden to a Cliché
Benoît Godin and Dominique Vinck

Part I Problematic frameworks and narratives of innovation
1. Why is Imitation not Innovation?
Benoît Godin

2. “Innovation fads” as an alternative research topic to pro-innovation bias. The examples of Jugaad and reverse innovation
Gérald Gaglio

3. ‘Best practices’ as mimesis? Innovation policies in peripheral countries
Tiago Brandão and Carolina Bagattolli

4. Innovation and the political state: Beyond the myth of technology and markets
Sebastian M. Pfotenhauer and Joakim Juhl

Part II What is left with the pro-innovation bias
5. Moving towards innovation through withdrawal: the neglect of destruction
Frédéric Goulet and Dominique Vinck

6. Comparing two cases of outlaw innovation: file sharing and legal highs
Johan Söderberg

7. Unattended consequences of innovation
Karl-Erik Sveiby

Part III Reactions to innovation
8. Resistance as a latent factor of innovation
Martin W. Bauer

9. Socio-technical dynamics of counter-hegemony and resistance
Hernan Thomas, Lucas Becerra and Santiago Garrido

10. “No” and “slow” innovation strategies as a response to increased innovation speed
Karl-Heinz Leitner

Part IV Alternatives frameworks
11. Learning thanks to innovation failure
Dominique Vinck

12. The economic rationality of NOvative behavior
Carolina Cañibano, María-Isabel Encinar and Félix-Fernando Muñoz

13. Regulatory enforcement as sociotechnical systems maintenance
Lee Vinsel

14. A discourse analysis of innovation in academic management literature
Beata Segercrantz, Karl-Erik Sveiby and Karin Berglund

15. Physics or biology as models for the study of innovation
John Langrish

Conclusion: Toward Critical Studies of Innovation
Benoît Godin and Dominique Vinck

Index


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