Theories of innovation

Theories of innovation are over one hundred years old, and theoretical thoughts on the subject have multiplied in recent decades. For most of history, the theories are not technological. One reads, again and again, that theories of innovation come from economics, particularly from Joseph Schumpeter, as if economics were the whole story. “The term ‘innovation’†, states historian of technology John Staudenmaier, “appears to have originated in a tradition of economic analysis†(Staudenmaier, 1985: 56). Staudenmaier is not alone in this belief. “The founding framework of innovation†is Schumpeter, states Norbert Alter (Alter, 2000: 8). This is a common attribution of innovation’s origin or ancestry (for example, Martin, 2008; Fagerberg and Verspagen, 2009). A dominant and economically-oriented field is responsible for such a historiography. However, theories are far more diverse than the standard historical perspective would lead us to believe. Schumpeter was only one among many theorists who studied innovation over the twentieth century. Scholars later resurrected Schumpeter to give legitimacy to a specific framework (Godin, 2012, 2014). As Michael Freeden suggests: “Ideologies are constantly engaged in reconstructing their own history†(Freeden, 1996: 239). The purpose of this chapter is to provide a historical perspective on theories of innovation, and a sense of their broad range. Over the twentieth century, scholars have produced a diversity of theories, a diversity that came, over time, to be dominated by a few theories, or a particular kind of theory: technological innovation. What are these theories? How do they explain innovation? With what conceptual apparatus?