Edições anteriores
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Towards a New Ethos of Science or a Reform of the Institution of Science?
n. 6 (2024)Over the past decade, we have witnessed a gradual and consistent evolution of research practices towards a more open science. This shift has been driven by both internal expectations within the scientific community and external demands from research policies.
The push for open science within the scientific community has been further reinforced by negative trends such as slow publication processes, criticism of the peer review system, and challenges in reproducing research results. Moreover, the urgent need for open science outside the scientific community has been highlighted by the COVID-19 crisis, which exposed the inefficiency of the scientific system in responding timely to public concerns. Transitioning towards open science is essential for enabling responsible research and innovation.
In this Special Issue, René von Schomberg's position paper explores how the underlying research values of ‘openness’ and ‘mutual responsiveness’, which are central to open science practices, can be integrated into a new ethos of science. Several colleagues then comment on the article propositions, raising concerns and reinforcing criticism towards the current Ethos (and practices) of Science nowadays. This Special Edition is closed by von Schomberg response to the critiques raised by Carl Mitcham, Mónica Edwards-Schachter, Sabina Leonelli, Lukas Fuchs, and Alfred Nordmann.
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Perspectives on innovation governance: challenges and dilemmas
n. 5 (2023)Guest Editors
Mónica Edwards-Schachter, Valencian International University
Hector Gonzalo Ordoñez-Matamoros, Universidad Externado de Colombia and University of Twente
Presentation
Innovation governance has risen to prominence as a central theme in nurturing and framing contemporary debates surrounding innovation policies. This Special Issue features contributions that critically examine the “complexities of governance and the governance of complexity” (Jessop, 2020), aiming for a deeper understanding of innovation governance processes. The selected papers build on some discussions from the inaugural international NOvationOnline Forum (held from 15 to 17 September 2021) around innovation policies and governance practices. The issue focuses on a critical approach to dilemmas and challenges associated with innovation governance in the context of sustainability transformations and its intricate relationships with ethical, social, economic, and environmental concerns.
Over the past few decades, the concept has gained significant traction, particularly in the corporate sector, as organizations seek to enhance their innovation governance practices. This shift reflects a broader trend toward proactive and anticipatory policymaking designed to effectively address complex challenges and uncertainties (Stoker, 1998; Diercks et al., 2019; Tõnurist & Hanson, 2020). Prominent examples include the emergence of Claims to Responsible Innovation (RI) and Transformative Innovation Policy (TIP), both of which are regarded as essential tools for addressing societal issues and driving systemic change toward sustainability (Diercks et al., 2019; Ludwig & Macnaghten, 2020). Additionally, there is a growing emphasis on enhancing civil society participation through a surge in Public Engagement (PE) initiatives. These endeavors are connected to the proliferation of governance labs and methods aimed at fostering optimistic discussions on participatory citizenship within public policy and innovation processes (e.g., the role of governance labs and Public Sector Innovation Laboratories, PSIL).
In summary, innovation governance encompasses a wide spectrum of perspectives on innovation, mostly focused on innovation systems and interrelationships and the conditions that facilitate thriving innovation. It involves the establishment of decision-making processes and structures that support the management of innovation activities, encompassing the definition of clear roles, responsibilities, and guidelines for innovation, as well as ongoing monitoring and evaluation of innovation performance.
The following papers provide different aspects of governance that are not generally taken into account in the literature, paying attention to the barriers and conundrums that arise in innovation processes and practices.
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Perspectivas críticas no domínio da inovação social, da empresa social e/ou da economia social solidária
n. 4 (2022)Guest Editors
Michael Bull, Manchester Metropolitan University
Tim Curtis, University of Northampton
Vicky Nowak, Manchester Metropolitan University
Presentation
This Thematic Issue seeks to explore critical perspectives of an international nature on social innovation (SI), social enterprise (SE) and/or social solidarity economy (SSE). The aim is to examine the grand narrative, explore the ontological assumptions of the field, challenge the normative and present alternatives that draw attention to political economy, critical theory and critical management studies.
Critical perspectives emerged in social innovation (SI) literature as a concerted effort sometime in 2008. A few voices sounded from the edges of the field much earlier. Ash Amin, Professor of Geography at Durham University, inspected the new favourite of public policy way back in 2002, discarded it as a “a poor substitute for a welfare state” and never returned to the subject. There were heated debates that challenged the grand narrative of SI at the International Social Innovation Research Conferences (ISIRC) (once called the Social Enterprise Research Conference before becoming ISIRC with the involvement of the social innovation theme from Skoll Centre). The Voluntary Sector Studies Network (VSSN) conferences picked away at the promise of unlimited performance and achievement of the upstart SE in a mature voluntary and charity network (Aiken, 2002, 2006, 2007; Grenier, 2009; Pharaoh, Scott & Fisher, 2004). Still, on the whole, the literature in the last twenty years has been overwhelmingly interested in promoting social enterprise (SE) and SI as (a) an inherently good thing, (b) a solution to all problems and (c) a politically neutral complement to neo-liberal economics globally.
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Popular users: why and how innovation research started to consider users in the innovation process
n. 3 (2021)Guest Editors
Rick Hölsgens, Technische Universität Dortmund (Germany)
Cornelius Schubert, Technische Universität Dortmund (Germany)
Presentation
Users have no doubt become popular in innovation research. They are not considered a passive mass of adopters but as a more or less active agency in innovation processes. Diffusion research has, for instance, distinguished between several adopter categories: innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, and laggards. These categories can be mapped on the diffusion s-curve and indicate a temporal order along which innovations may be analysed. However, early or late adopters were still seen primarily as adopters. Concepts such as “reinvention” or “domestication” then put more emphasis on the ways in which an innovation may be changed within the adoption process. In these cases, innovations came from elsewhere (i.e., manufacturers), but the users were credited with more creative potential than simply adopting novelties. The turn towards user-driven innovations decidedly shifted the creative potential towards (specific) user groups, transgressing the traditional distinction between producers and consumers.
The involvement of users in innovation processes has been addressed under different labels, for instance, user innovation, open innovation, or participatory design and from different fields such as management and innovation research, science and technology studies, or social innovation studies. The main gist of these approaches lies in reclaiming hitherto neglected aspects, perspectives, or sources of innovations, thus arguing against a top-down producer-centred models of innovation by emphasising bottom-up user-centred modes of innovation. They reconfigure ideas about pushes and pulls, about the constellations and locales in which invention and diffusion occur, and about the transformations of innovations as they emerge and evolve over time and space.
This thematic issue of NOvation seeks to shed light on this increasing popularity of “the user” in innovation studies. We gather here contributions from diverse backgrounds that critically focus on the role of users in innovation studies, from empowerment and emancipation to valorisation and exploitation. We especially addressed the questions of why users have become popular both empirically and conceptually across a range of fields and spanning from academia to politics and civil society. How does user-centred innovation relate to more traditional models of producer-centred innovation? Which role do critical users play in innovation research? Are there specific fields in which users are seen to be more active than in others? Especially, who is considered to be a user or customer?
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Responsible Innovation (RI) in the midst of an innovation crisis
n. 2 (2020)Guest Editors
Lucien von Schomberg, University of Greenwich (United Kingdom)
Vincent Blok, Wageningen University (Netherlands)
Presentation
The concept of Responsible Innovation (RI) occupies a central place in the discourse on science and technology, especially in the context of the European Union (EU) but also within academia. This concept is guided by the idea of steering science and technology towards societally desirable outcomes, particularly in response to normative objectives such as Sustainable Development Goals. Visions of RI typically propose that to innovate responsibly requires a permanent commitment to be anticipatory, reflective, inclusively deliberative, and responsive. They also emphasize the need for open access, gender equality, science education, ethical standard in conducting experiments, and democratic governance.
However, the societal purpose of RI fundamentally conflicts with the imperative of maximizing economic growth inherent in today’s innovation climate. This conflict points to a crisis in which innovation struggles to serve public interests insofar private interests continue to be prioritized. The magnitude of this crisis is also reflected within the RI literature itself, where the political ambition to exceed the privatization wave is summoned to a techno-economic concept of innovation. This issue of NOvation – Critical Studies of Innovation brings into question to what extent innovation necessarily relates to the market, whether it is possible to develop an alternative concept of innovation that is separated from economic ends, and how we can conceptualize, for example, a political understanding of innovation. What really is innovation? While all seven contributions share the aspiration to critically reflect on these questions, they each offer a distinct and original perspective in discussing the relation between innovation, technology, politics, economics, and responsibility.
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X‐innovation: Re‐inventing Innovation Again and Again
n. 1 (2019)Guest Editors
Gérald Gaglio, Université Nice Sophia Antipolis (France)
Benoît Godin, INRS, Montreal (Canada)
Sebastian Pfotenhauer, Technische Universität München (Germany)
Presentation
Innovation is an old word, of Greek origin, that came into the Latin vocabulary in the early Middle Age and into our everyday vocabulary with the Reformation. However, it is only during the second half of the twentieth century that innovation became a fashionable concept and turned into a buzzword. It gave rise to a plethora of terms like technological innovation, organizational innovation, industrial innovation and, more recently, social innovation, open innovation, sustainable innovation, responsible innovation. We may call these terms X-innovation.
In this way, X-innovation is the latest step to give sense to a century-old process of enlargement of the concept of innovation. Over the last five centuries, innovation enlarged its meaning from the religious to the political to the social to the economical. X-innovation is the more recent such enlargement. It Is the continuation, under new terms, of the contestation of technological innovation as the dominant discourse of the twentieth century.
How can we make sense of this semantic extension? Why do these terms come into being? What drives people to coin new terms? What effects do the terms have on thought, on culture and scholarship and on policy and politics? Which forms of contestation and appropriation ensue around certain X-innovations? How do they shape, and are shaped by, broader social trends? How to they relate to questions of power and inclusion?
