Selling the innovation rhetoric: A neoliberal catechism for the 21st century

Within the past twenty years, the concept of ‘innovation’ has become incorporated into numerous discourses, almost to the point of ubiquity. Within the business world, it has been strongly alleged that firms’ survival... [ view full abstract ]

Within the past twenty years, the concept of ‘innovation’ has become incorporated into numerous discourses, almost to the point of ubiquity. Within the business world, it has been strongly alleged that firms’ survival against threats posed by its rivals is dependent on their ability to innovate or commercialize innovations (Celfis and Marsili, 2006; Kalb, 2013; Zhang and Mohnen, 2013; Audretsch and Thurik, 2001). At the same time, the innovation mantra is not strictly confined to the business management literature, nor is it always conceived of in technological terms. In the government realm for instance, politicians find themselves under increased pressure to design policies that stimulate innovation. To that end, in the summer of 2016 the government of Canada announced its intention to foster ‘innovation as a Canadian value’ and ‘build Canada as a global centre of innovation’ by ‘making innovation a national priority’ and inviting ‘all Canadians to share their ideas on cultivating a confident nation of innovators’ (http://news.gc.ca/web/article-en.do?nid=1084439). Because innovation has been “elevated to almost beatific status, uncritically accepted as progressive and urgent”, its evocation more often than not serves as a (potent) rhetorical tool (Perren and Sapsed, 2013: 1826). In this paper I ask: what innovative possibilities are imagined or conceptualized under this national priority? What limitations are placed on innovation and how is it surveilled? I employ a historical approach to trace the social construction of the discourse of innovation and examine the emerging and problematic practice of the measurement of innovation. I contend that the current conceptualization of innovation is framed within a specific narrow market-driven rationality is used in service of the industrial consumer economy that denies real social change.