Growth-otiented innovation triggers the treadmill of production which is globally unsustainable

The ‘innovate or die’ mantra has indisputably dominated Science and Technology (S&T) policy in the last decades of the 20th as well as the beginning of the 21st century (Pansera and Fressoli, 2021). Under this mantra innovation is generally seen as neutral, apolitical, and inevitable; a necessity for any type of progress and prosperity. It is often supported and underpinned by an almost religious faith in progress that crystalised into technological determinism and productivism. The first sees technical change as inevitable, the latter considers innovation always good and desirable. This interpretation of innovation is in many ways connected to the role of technical change in industrialised capitalist societies. A role condensed in Schumpeter’s concept of Creative Destruction, an idea borrowed from Sombart’s (1913) War and Capitalism (Reinert and Reinert, 2006). In the 1930s Schumpeter (1934) argued that one of the main drivers of capital accumulation is technological change (incl. innovation), which continuously revolutionises the way goods and services are produced and delivered, introducing dynamism and instability into the context of a competitive free market economy. Shortly after, i.e. in the decades following World War II, the endless pursuit of economic growth became one of the core economic and political goals (Dale, 2012). Hence, the interpretation of innovation anchored in the concept of Creative Destruction, coupled with the systemic application of science for the development and expansion of market economies, has helped produce an unprecedented era of economic as well as material growth.

The pursuit of endless economic growth and expansion has been ecologically problematised as early as the 1970s (see Georgescu-Roegen, 1971; Meadows et al., 1972). For a breadth of scholars (see e.g. Daly and Farley, 2011; Hickel and Kallis, 2020; Spash, 2017; Victor, 2008) the ever increasing use of materials and resources is the reason for climate change, ocean acidification, species extinction, and other types of ecological degradation. Humankind faces unprecedented changes due to its increasing material throughput that ignores the biophysical limits of our planet (Hoekstra and Wiedmann, 2014; Rockstrom ¨ et al., 2009). It therefore begs the question why an interpretation of innovation based on Creative Destruction with the purpose of endless expansion persists? These mainstream interpretations of innovation can be interpreted as actively propelling climate change and other ecological degradation further undermining a sustainable future on this planet. In this paper we therefore argue that the seemingly neutral view of innovation as a necessary driver of economic growth and thus prosperity has not only become obsolete, but also represents a noxious and dangerous compass guiding S&T policy.

To question the neutrality of innovation we draw insights from Science, Technology and Society (STS) scholarship and beyond; in particular Walsh’s (2021, p. 2) argument that “innovation today is best understood as innovation under capital”. Walsh (2021) suggests STS scholarship to (re)consider its Marxist roots to achieve a truly critical view on innovation (see also Sheehan, 2021). Following this line of thought the basic assumptions of technological determinism (i.e. artefacts produce society) can also be questioned (MacKenzie, 1984). Following these arguments, a more nuanced and politicised framing of technology as socially constructed phenomena could be adopted to guide the ways society manages and governs innovation (Pansera and Fressoli, 2021; Winner, 1993). In other words, this paper takes the perspective that innovation ought to be understood in its specific historic and cultural settings. Creative Destruction (and thus the current understanding of innovation) as an ideology emerged from a specific set of values and worldviews that have been the cradle of Western capitalism (Jimenez et al., 2022). Modern ideas of innovation can be viewed as stemming from the needs of capitalism for valorisations (MacKenzie, 1984). Valorisation is here understood as the process of directing investment towards the increase (and ultimately accumulation) of capital. Investment employs technology to transform labour and natural resources to abstract value to be realised in markets. Valorisation is closely connected to commodification and drives accumulation by creating and reproducing the conditions for accumulation to take place. Therefore, under the understanding of innovation in the context of capital valorisation, the sole purpose of innovation is to increase capital returns. Political ecologists like Gorz (2012) argue that the process of capital valorisation imposes its logic on science and technology (hence also innovation), definition of needs, consumption, and organisation of work. Being embodied in this logic of valorisation, the dominant neutral view on innovation rarely questions goals, purposes and values of innovation (Walsh, 2021).