Challenging the Innovation Paradigm: Conclusions, Practical Implications, and Future Research

Human innovativeness is a very valuable capacity and that has probably been recognized since the dawn of humanity. When we engage in innovation, we introduce change, something that makes a diff erence in the established order. It is this powerful feature of innovation that has made it part of political and religious discourses as long as we have written records, that is, in the West since antiquity. Godin shows in chapter 3 how the concept of innovation has always been exploited by the rulers of the day. Historically innovation was promoted as ‘bad’ and used as a pejorative by the church and kings because it threatened the(ir) established order. Today, the concept is still exploited to serve a political agenda for the establishment of our day, an amorphous amalgamation of commercial interests and national politics, and in an ironic twist, innovation is now promoted as ‘good.’ We are told that there is a global competition between companies and nations in which only the ‘best’ innovators will prevail. Innovation has become an inevitable imperative; ‘we’ must innovate. More, better, faster-or else.