Innovation Crisis

Cognitive capitalism or knowledge capitalism is the pride and joy of high-income countries. It emphasizes technology-driven innovation, organized by the private sector. We investigate problems with this model and explore alternatives

Our general investigations

  • Can contemporary innovation theory cope with the innovation crisis in high-income countries?
  • Is innovation being damaged by too much emphasis on technology and too little on cultural and social factors?
  • Why can't current innovation practice successfully develop an environmentally vital technology like 2nd and 3rd generation solar photovoltaic manufacturing?
  • What new cultural and social goals would fix the current innovation system?

Affiliated Personnel

Projects:

Innovation Theory Website

  • Can Rich Countries Still Innovate? Cultural and Technical Papers on a New Innovation Model ed. With Daryl Boudreaux (in preparation, due 2013).

Solar Futures: Science and Business Life in the Race against Climate Change

  • Why is solar photovoltaic manufacturing going bankrupt at the same time as it installs more solar panels than ever before? Do practitioners have good ideas about how to turn things around?

Crucible Network - Policy research

  • Crucible is a research network that originated in the University of Cambridge in 2001, and has since become the largest organization in the world dedicated to promoting rigorous research collaboration between technologists and researchers in the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences (AH&SS).

Whatever Happened to Solar Innovation

 

Related Publications

Books and Collections

(2017)

Can Rich Countries Still Innovate? Cultural and Technical Papers on a New Innovation Model
[Citation]

Aug
2015

What Happened to Solar Innovation? (Film, 80 minutes)
 
[Details]

Articles

2012

Does Solar Energy Need a New Innovation Model? The Case of Germany
[Citation]

Jul 2012

Is Nanoscale Collaboration Meeting Nanotechnology’s Social Challenge? A Call to Nano-Normalcy
[Citation]

Dec 2011

コグニタリアートの構造と沈黙 (Structure and Silence of the Cognitariat)
[Citation]

Oct 2010

Review of The Scientific Life: A Moral History of a Late Modern Vocation
[Citation]

Jun 2010

Avoiding Network Failure: the Case of the National Nanotechnology Initiative
[Citation]

Mar 2010

Is the Corporation a Social Partner? The Case of Nanotechnology
[Citation]

Oct 2009

Risky Business: Why Public is Losing to Private in American Research
[Citation]

Jan 2008

Review of The Shock of the Old: Technology and Global History since 1900
[Citation]

Jun 2005

Review of Ivory Tower and Industrial Innovation: University-Industry Technology Transfer Before and After the Bayh-Dole Act
[Citation]

Spring 2005

The Future of the Old Economy: New Deal Motives in New Economy Investors
 
[Citation]

Jul 1998

Corporate Culture Wars
[Citation]