TIME Excellence Lecture

Please join us for a webinar on Tuesday the 26th of March 2024 at 13:00 Athens time. The speaker is Andy Stirling, SPRU, Un. of Sussex. The title of the talk is “Taking Directionality Seriously: opening up hidden politics to enable innovation democracies".

This webinar is free and open to all. The moderator is Dr. Andreas Panagopoulos. 

Join Zoom Meeting
https://uoc-gr.zoom.us/j/96479541729?pwd=YW1BbklkdGlLNFpyaHRMaXBFZjcwZz09
Meeting ID: 964 7954 1729
Passcode: 123123

NOTE: To participate please contact Andreas Panagopoulos at least an hour prior to the webinar.

Abstract: Developing earlier work in new ways, this paper systematically explores analytic and political implications of ‘ideas about direction in innovation’. Despite their importance, key aspects remain persistently hidden in mainstream innovation policy. Pressures for concealment arise from general hegemonic interests in prevailing colonial modernity, as well as more particular expediencies to power and privilege in specific settings. To help enable more rigorous and responsible challenge to these dynamics, three linked but contrasting meanings are mobilised that are often conflated in this field. First, ideas of ‘directing innovation’ concern the narrow driving of motivating processes towards some given end. Second, the ‘direction of innovation’ involves broader steering of pathways towards more openly chosen ends. Third, ‘directionality of innovation’ is about grasping deeper political potentialities spanning a plurality of ends. Much current innovation research and policy fails to attend to – or act on – these different meanings. A series of practical (but often neglected) responses will be explored in each regard. These entail renewed emphasis on precaution, participation and accountability, towards supporting more plural ‘directions for progress’ in ‘innovation democracies’.