233030 VO Politics of Innovation and its Institutional Dimensions (2025W)

Talk of 'innovation' has proliferated in the past decades: it is core to political programmes and economic growth strategies (such as Horizon Europe) as well as firms' marketing efforts and tactics of social movements. It has also entered the core of many academic fields. While today we have gotten used to thinking of innovation as central to societal developments, this is not self-evident in historical perspective. Back in 17th century, innovation had the meaning of political change, reform and revolution and 'novelty' was suspicious (Godin 2014).
This is quite contrary to today’s understanding of innovation as central to creating wealth, well being and (sometimes even) survival. This lecture starts by discussing the very meaning of the notion of innovation, its rise and proliferation, its relation to diverse forms of knowledge generation and exchange, and the many different facets of institutional framework conditions (e.g., for funding, measuring, or owning innovation) that societies have created to foster and stabilize this view. Amongst others, we will explore different attempts to steer innovation to serve societal needs better. Taking into account the broader societal context, we will also address in detail how the dominant understanding of innovation as technological innovation for the market developed and stabilised during the 20th century, e.g. by institutionalising science and innovation statistics and fields like 'innovation studies'. We further discuss how alternative concepts of innovation struggle to gain (political) legitimacy (e.g. 'frugal innovation' or 'social innovation'), the role of (commercial) innovation in the New Space Race, what happens when innovation turns to waste (and who should care) as well as the role of innovation in global politics. Throughout several examples, we will also explore different attempts to steer innovation to better serve social-environmental needs and discuss innovation from de-growth and post-colonial perspectives.
The aim of the course is to engage with innovation from different perspectives and learn to understand it as standing in a co-productive relationship with societal (institutional, political, economic, cultural, etc.) change.
The lecture (VO) does so via talks by the lecturer but also by interactive discussions, brainstorming, or reflections on contemporary representations (e.g., videos) of innovation policies. The discussion class (KO) takes up and reflects the topics of the lecture. It does so through readings of scientific texts and engaging with diverse other forms of input, mostly in the framework of teamwork-based debate. Please register seperately for the discussion class!