Empty Innovation: Causes and Consequences of Society's Obsession with Entrepreneurship and Growth

ISBN-13: 9783031314780 / Angielski

Olof Hallonsten

Opis

Innovation is generally viewed as something inherently good, a source of progress and prosperity, in our society. But innovation can also have negative, unintended, and wasteful effects, if policies are misdirected and organizations pursue innovation to look good and convey a message, rather than to actually achieve improvements of technologies, services, and products. This book makes the case that innovation has become a buzzword, a political cure-all, and increasingly an empty phrase, and that this has started to become detrimental to innovation itself.

Governmental (and supra-governmental) innovation policy is often unrealistically phrased and shaped, and corporate innovation projects are not seldom meaningless acts of window-dressing. The book describes the problems this presents for society, organizations, and individuals, and seeks explanations for why it has come to be this way. Giving way to a more realistic view of what innovation really is, and how it can be accomplished, the book develops a multifaceted sociological and historical argument where several complementary reasons for the prevalence of “empty innovation” are proposed. The book will be of great interest to scholars and students of innovation, entrepreneurship, sustainability, and all those with an interest in the failures of current innovation strategies.

This is an open access book.

Spis treści

Chapter 1. We are obsessed with innovation

This chapter presents the argument in a nutshell. It gives a snapshot of the obsession with innovation in current society and organizations, with several examples, and an orientation in previous and current critical studies of innovation, the problem areas they point out, and how the book will address these.

Chapter 2. Innovation from forbidden to cure-all

This chapter is based mostly on the fine work by Benoit Godin and colleagues, but also other secondary literature, and chronicles the use of the word “innovation” in modern society and how it has transformed from something loathed and forbidden, to today’s situation where innovation is seen as a panacea. The chapter contains both a brief history of the concept of innovation, and a brief history of innovation policy, in corporate and government settings. It gives a descriptive and straightforward historical account that can serve as a reference point for the reader in the coming chapters.

Chapter 3. We’re all entrepreneurs now

This chapter shifts gears to what has been called “the entrepreneurship industry” and the current sentiment in society that entrepreneurship is the road to salvation for individuals and societies. There is a lot to suggest today – from entrepreneurship education in universities, through the so called gig economy, and on to the image of the entrepreneur in popular culture – that in today’s society, we humans are not expected to be citizens, workers, etc., but indeed entrepreneurs. Regardless of what we do and who we are, society expects us to be entrepreneurial because this is how we become fulfilled as humans and on aggregated level, as society. The chapter describes this situation, with the help of secondary literature, and discusses its implications for individuals, organizations, society, and also for the argument of this book, i.e. how does this ‘society of entrepreneurs’ spur empty innovation?

Chapter 4. The economized society

This is the first of the explanatory chapters. A historical sociological argument is laid out, summarized in the concept of “economization”. This means that the norms and values of the economy is superimposed on broader society, a development that has been going on for several decades and that historically originated in the economic downturn of the 1970s, and was accentuated with neoliberalism, globalization, and the end of the Cold War. Economization is theoretically anchored in classical sociology (Weber, Marx, Habermas) but takes many shapes today, and one of its effects is projectification and a permeating growth logic in all of society’s spheres, especially the public sector whose bureaucracy and political governance becomes focused on economic growth and (global) competitiveness as overriding political goal. The chapter explains how this leads to obsession with innovation, but also attention to the superficial (and easily measurable/quantifiable) instead of the profoundly contributory or substantial.

Chapter 5. The entrepreneurial state

This chapter continues the historical exposé by explaining the consequences of economization for policymaking, especially the neoliberal political developments of the 1980s, which implemented quasi-markets and shallow performance evaluation and governance in public sector operations, and the return of big government in the 2000s, which solidified the public sector’s role as active in industry and research policy, in other words, innovation as a main area of operation for the government and its agencies. The chapter problematizes what has been called “the entrepreneurial state” and critiques the idea of an active role of government in innovation, pointing out how it can lead to large Potemkin villages of ‘innovation’ rather than real innovation.

Chapter 6. Faster, better, stronger

This chapter deepens the historical-sociological explanatory ambition of the book, first by discussing the role of expectations in policymaking and advertising today, which has spread into innovation policy and not least regional development, and created a situation where innovation projects and regional development plans are advertised and ‘sold’ to taxpayers and their representatives, and to bureaucrats with decision-making powers, through increasingly superficial language and imagery and with promises without any anchoring in reality. Second, the chapter discusses ideas of the recent individualization of society, the “me-generation”, social acceleration, and increasing expectations of immediate gratification. The critical analysis in this chapter connects this sociological and psychological matter to the discussion in chapter 3 (“We are all entrepreneurs now”) but it also discusses its connections to the financialization of society and the economy (related to economization in a previous chapter), which means that short-term profits trump everything in corporate settings and lead to cutbacks and downsizing of capacities vital for innovation and longer-term progress, and how this seems to have spread to society. The chapter also discusses the “move fast and break things” philosophy of innovation in the contemporary digital economy, and its flaws, leading up to the final two chapters.

Chapter 8. What innovation really is

In this chapter, the discussion takes a step back to ponder what innovation really is, how it is accomplished, and what it needs to thrive and survive. The chapter builds on substantial works in the history and sociology of science, and also recent works that handles similar topics. The key purpose of the chapter is to establish a counterimage or counterpoint to “empty innovation” by showing, methodically and carefully, not what innovation really is (because the concept is elusive and cannot easily be defined, which is a key point here and explained in the chapter, the headline is rhetorical) but rather that it is quite clear that innovation is not that what has been described in previous chapters, and therefore that is all empty innovation, which the chapter ends in establishing as a relevant and reasonable point.

Chapter 7. The consequences of emptiness

The book ends with a kind of “wake up call” in the shape of a discussion of the negative consequences of “empty innovation” (and, for the sake of balance, also some potential positive consequences) for society, organizations, and individuals. The chapter thereby also repeats the main points of the book in the context of discussing their risks.

O autorze

Olof Hallonsten is a Senior Lecturer and Associate Professor at the Lund University School of Economics and Management, Sweden. He has published widely in books and journals, with a recent focus on critical studies on the interface of science and society. He has also worked as a consultant for Swedish governmental agencies and the European Commission.

Blurb

Innovation is generally viewed as something inherently good, a source of progress and prosperity in our society. But innovation can also have negative, unintended, and wasteful effects, if policies are misdirected and organizations pursue innovation to look good and convey a message, rather than to actually achieve improvements of technologies, services, and products. This book makes the case that innovation has become a buzzword, a political cure-all, and increasingly an empty phrase, and that this has become detrimental to innovation itself.

Governmental (and supra-governmental) innovation policy is often unrealistically phrased and shaped, and corporate innovation projects are not seldom meaningless acts of window-dressing. The book describes the problems this presents for society, organizations, and individuals, and seeks explanations for why it has come to be this way. Giving way to a more realistic view of what innovation really is, and how it can be accomplished, the book develops a multifaceted sociological and historical argument where several complementary reasons for the prevalence of “empty innovation” are proposed. The book will be of great interest to scholars and students of innovation, entrepreneurship, sustainability, and all those with an interest in the failures of current innovation strategies.

This is an open access book.

Olof Hallonsten is a Senior Lecturer and Associate Professor at the Lund University School of Economics and Management, Sweden. He has published widely in books and journals, with a recent focus on critical studies on the interface of science and society. He has also worked as a consultant for Swedish governmental agencies and the European Commission.