"(...) For over 2,500 years, innovation was a contested idea. It became de-contested in the nineteenth
and twentieth centuries. Two types of argument contributed to this rehabilitation: an economic
one (utility) and a cultural one (creativity). Over time, the former became dominant in theories, public
policy and discourses. Yet many writers on innovation continue to define innovation as creativity. What
place does the cultural argument really hold in modern theories of innovation?This chapter is a contribution
to the intellectual history of innovation. It offers some outlines for a genealogy of the idea of
innovation as creativity. I suggest that the evolution of the philosophical (or “psychological”) doctrine on the
association of ideas, then of the idea of combination in literary criticism, were key moments in this
development. Despite this history, to modern writers, creativity remains mostly a word, a mere word, at best a
metaphor, and the association between creativity and innovation but a slogan. (...)" |