Different theories, models and narratives of innovation compete for both legitimacy and authority. The book examines imitation, non-innovative roles, resistance to innovation, slow innovation, the rationale of non-users, failure, withdrawal, collateral impacts and alternative models.
In this book, Benoît Godin examines the emergence and diffusion of the three most important conceptual models of innovation from the early twentieth century to the late 1980s: stage models, linear models, and holistic models. Godin first traces the history of the models of innovation constructed during this period, considering why these particular models came into being and what use was made of them. He then rethinks and debunks the historical narratives of models developed by theorists of innovation. Godin documents a greater diversity of thinkers and schools than in the conventional account, tracing a genealogy of models beginning with anthropologists, industrialists, and practitioners in the first half of the twentieth century to their later formalization in STS-STI.