Reinventing innovation

Technological innovation is only one of many kinds of innovation. It is also one of the many terms coined to make use of the concept of innovation. In recent years, the concept gave rise to a plethora of terms like social innovation, sustainable innovation, responsible innovation and the like as alternatives to industrial and technological innovation. I call these terms X-innovation. How can we make sense of this semantic extension? Why do these terms come into being? What drives people to coin new terms and what do they want to achieve? The story is one of appropriation and contestation. On one hand, people appropriate a word (innovation) for its value-laden character and because of what they can do with it. A word with such a polysemy as innovation is a multi-purpose word. It works in the public mind (imaginaries) and among policy-makers. It also contributes to scholars’ citation records. On the other hand, people contest a term (technological innovation) because of its hegemonic connotation. They coin alternative ones that often become a brand.