Innovation: Why?

Innovation is the horizon of all research policies. To take just one example, the European Commission, in 2010, set the objective of developing an “Innovation Union” for 2020. The reference document immediately stated that the competitiveness, employment and standard of living of the European continent essentially depended on it. The ability to encourage innovation, which is “also the best means to solve the main problems facing our society and which arise every day in a more acute form, whether climate change, lack of energy and resources, health or the aging of the population.

Innovation is responsible for both stimulating the economy and maintaining, if not improving, the standard of living, although invoked more than 300 times in less than 50 pages, – surprisingly – nowhere defined in this document. Its meaning was taken for granted, obvious, yet left in the shadows. However, the importance of the issues has become such that it is worth questioning the relevance of the various motives that we attribute to innovation today. Marcel Proust wrote In the shade of young girls in flowers : “An artificial innovation has less force than repetition to suggest a new truth”. What did that mean? What is innovation called?

with Vincent BontamsPhilosopher of science and technology, writer In the name of innovation, research objectives and methods in the 21st century (Les Belles Lettres, 2023).