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%T The Politics of User-Driven Innovation: On innovative users, do-able needs, and frugal robots %A Lipp, Benjamin %J NOvation - Critical Studies of Innovation %N 3 %P 65-89 %D 2021 %K user-driven innovation; healthcare robotics; pre-commercial procurement; interfacing %@ 2562-7147 %U https://revistas.ufpr.br/novation/article/view/91146/49255 %X 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. %C MISC %G en %9 Zeitschriftenartikel %W GESIS - http://www.gesis.org %~ SSOAR - http://www.ssoar.info