Innovating Differently: Alternatives, Critiques, Resistance to Innovation

Coordinators: Alban Ouahab & Morgan Meyer

This axis aims to explore critical dimensions and alternative proposals to classical conceptions of innovation, which often overly focus on technological solutionism, entrepreneurial processes, and the goal of economic growth. The empirical and theoretical challenge is to problematize innovation based on the reformulations and reconfigurations developed through various initiatives by a multitude of actors. The objective is thus to explore the potential for social, political, and economic reorganization arising from these concrete experiments.

The past decade has seen a resurgence in debates about the relevance of the notion of innovation. Firstly, a conceptual limitation restricts innovation to technical and commercial objects and neglects the study of atypical forms of innovation. However, other phenomena deserve attention, such as so-called “social,” “non-commercial,” or “non-technological” innovation. Secondly, on an empirical level, the proliferation of resistances and critiques towards innovation is evident. While the phenomenon is not new, debates surrounding the climate crisis, planetary boundaries, and resource scarcity cast doubt on traditional approaches to innovation. Faced with these resistances, new practices emerge that warrant investigation.

Theorization and the development of expertise on these critiques of innovation are crucial, especially as scientific knowledge is widely mobilized by grassroots actors (activists, associations of residents, etc.) to shed light on controversial topics. Simultaneously with the questioning of a technocentric vision, new forms of practices and collectives that critique innovation or propose an alternative form are emerging. Research conducted within this axis aims to better conceptualize the multiplicity and originality of these new forms of organization and mobilization.

To explore these various initiatives, this research axis is structured around three main questions: in what forms does the critique of dominant innovation practices manifest itself? What are the critical analyses of the concept of innovation? What alternative forms of innovation are emerging?

Several themes are addressed, including:

• Resistance and critiques of techno-solutionist discourses
• Critiques of the innovation concept through the study of circular economy, social innovation, and maintenance and repair practices
• Alternative forms of innovation, low-tech, and non-technological innovation

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