The emergence of responsible innovation articulates the need for a paradigm shift in the innovation discourse, driving innovation away from mainstream economic interests towards societally desirable outcomes. In this chapter I report on three main challenges of responsible innovation-respectively the epistemic, political, and conceptual challenge-and discuss to what extent they bring the feasibility of this paradigm shift into question. In light of the conceptual challenge, I demonstrate that the epistemic and political implications of responsible innovation relate to the widely presupposed concept of technological innovation and commercialized innovation. In this vein, I argue that the discourse of responsible innovation is summoned to the overarching pursuit of technological and economic progress and, as such, is unable to realize its ambitions. This leads me to conclude with a call for future research to explore an alternative concept of innovation which addresses the public good beyond mainstream economic thought.
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Front Matter
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Part I: VISIONS OF INNOVATION
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Part II: THEORIZING INNOVATION IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY: THE FOUNDATIONS
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Part III: ALTERNATIVE APPROACHES TO INNOVATION
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Part IV: ALTERNATIVE TYPES OF INNOVATION
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Part V: SUPPORTING INNOVATION: REFRAMING THE INSTRUMENTS
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Part VI: IMMUNE DISCIPLINES AND FORGOTTEN THEORIZATIONS
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Part VII: THEORIZING THE THEORIES
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Back Matter
