Innovation without growth: Frameworks for understanding technological change in a post-growth era

Abstract

The feasibility and desirability of endless economic growth is being increasingly questioned by scholars and activists. Whilst envisioning alternative economic models is key to assure the sustainability and wellbeing of present and future generations, few studies have analysed what might be the role of ‘innovation’ in a post-growth era. Innovating has become an imperative for the survival and expansion of any form of organisation. But this ‘innovate or die mania’ underpins assumptions – such as technological determinism and productivism – that neglect the socially constructed character of technological development, its politics and its capacity to enable (or disable) just and equitable societies. In this paper we posit that untangling innovation from growth is key to imagine a post-growth era. We show how alternative bottom up initiatives, promoted by a variety of different organizational forms, have challenged mainstream ideas about innovation and growth. These experiments provide a glimpse into what ‘innovation without growth’ could mean in terms of technology and social organization. We conclude by proposing new paths in research aimed at exploring under which conditions post-growth-oriented organizations can flourish and diffuse.

Transformative enterprises: Characteristics and a definition

“…Consequently, transformative enterprises reach managerial goals and success by other means than growth (De Souza & Seifert, 2018; Leonhardt et al., 2017). Instead of scaling up, these enterprises seek to reproduce their business model (Gebauer et al., 2015; Nesterova, 2021; Pansera & Fressoli, 2021; Scholl & Mewes, 2015a).…”

Counter-Hegemonic Decision Premises in Commons-Based Peer Production: A Degrowth Case Study

“…Benkler (2017) argues that PP can be used as a tool within firms to create new innovations and retain these through property rights such as patents. In other words, PP can serve firms' capitalistdefined goals for innovation, accumulation and growth (Pansera and Fressoli 2020;van Griethuysen 2010). Contrastingly, CBPP employs commoning (Bollier and Helfrich 2015;, that is, the capacity to contribute to and benefit from the commons, based on community-defined rules and norms.…”

Innovación y sustentabilidad empresarial en turismo. Una revisión sistemática de literatura

“…Por otro lado, la capacidad de innovación permite obtener una ventaja competitiva dado que implica la explotación de los recursos existentes en la empresa para convertirla en la líder dentro del mercado. Cabe señalar que la capacidad de innovación depende del apoyo de todas las áreas funcionales de la organización (London and Sheikh, 2020), garantizando el éxito deseado (Dey et al, 2019;Hamdan and Alheet, 2020;Pansera and Fressoli, 2020).…”

“…Hoy la crisis mundial derivada de la pandemia de la COVID-19 ha traído consigo fuertes estragos para todos los sectores empresariales que se ven afectados por las medidas de salubridad establecidas a nivel local, nacional y mundial. En consecuencia, el sector empresarial turístico está teniendo limitaciones para su operación (entre ellas el cierre temporal o definitivo de los establecimientos); de manera que los gestores están adoptando nuevas capacidades de innovación como elemento medular para la supervivencia dentro del mercado (Bhattacharyya and Thakre, 2021;Pansera and Fressoli, 2020).…”