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The Politics of User-Driven Innovation: On innovative users, do-able needs, and frugal robots
[journal article]
Abstract Users play an increasingly important role in European innovation policy. They are commonly seen as drivers of and active co-creators within innovation processes. However, user-driven innovation remains infused with a number of assumptions about users, technology, and "successful" innovation, which (... view more
Users play an increasingly important role in European innovation policy. They are commonly seen as drivers of and active co-creators within innovation processes. However, user-driven innovation remains infused with a number of assumptions about users, technology, and "successful" innovation, which (partly) undermine a more democratic, open approach to innovation. In this contribution, I investigate the interplay between broader policy assumptions in the European discourse on user-driven innovation and its practical performance within an innovation project centring on healthcare robotics. Here, I argue that the politics of user-driven innovation harbours particular assumptions that, in effect, restrict the agency of users while also engendering conflict and contradictory outcomes. Hence, user-driven innovation is not simply about users driving innovation but rather about interfacing users and their concerns with (robotics) developers and their technology. For this, I propose an analytics of interfacing, which draws together literatures on the performative dynamics of participatory processes and more recent work on the political economy of participation. Here, I contend that it is not enough to investigate the construction and performance of publics; rather, it is additionally necessary to follow the manifold practices by which those publics are rendered available for certain technological solutions - and vice versa. Such an analytical approach opens up a fruitful avenue to critically enquire into the politics of participation - sitting in between innovation policy and practice.... view less
Keywords
participation; innovation; innovation policy; health care delivery system; technical development
Classification
Sociology of Science, Sociology of Technology, Research on Science and Technology
Free Keywords
user-driven innovation; healthcare robotics; pre-commercial procurement; interfacing
Document language
English
Publication Year
2021
Page/Pages
p. 65-89
Journal
NOvation - Critical Studies of Innovation (2021) 3
Issue topic
Popular users: why and how innovation research started to consider users in the innovation process
ISSN
2562-7147
Status
Published Version; peer reviewed
Licence
Creative Commons - Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0