La vida social de la innovación: una mirada pragmática a las prácticas de producción de conocimiento en el mundo de la consultoría

Abstract

This article unpacks the different practices and modes of knowledge that constitutes innovation consultancy.  By relying on recent debates in economic sociology, it argues that innovation consulting work can be understood as the fabrication of types of situations that help to evoke non yet existing objects as a potential form of economic value. We call these situations as "innovation atmospheres". This theoretical argument is empirically deployed by presenting material from a six-month ethnographic case study consisting of attending innovation workshops developed for companies. We identify that different types of innovation atmospheres arise from the work involved in of mobilizing affects, devices, and metaphors to induce indeterminate situations. We describe how these atmospheres involve evaluating and prioritizing reality in specific ways.  Finally, we conclude by discussing the similarities and differences between the constitutive operations of innovation consulting and other social practices oriented to produce the new, such as the art world.