The rise of innovation as a key focus in the contemporary business world has found expression in the growing number of innovation consultants, a professional group of people who argue that they can help companies innovate their products, services, and structures by virtue of their expertise. However, innovation’s rising popularity has taken place together with the mounting suspicion that innovation has become a reified notion, a kind of catch-all phrase that is devoid of meaning. This book addresses this tension based on an ethnographic analysis of innovation consultants’ practices and norms o ... More

The rise of innovation as a key focus in the contemporary business world has found expression in the growing number of innovation consultants, a professional group of people who argue that they can help companies innovate their products, services, and structures by virtue of their expertise. However, innovation’s rising popularity has taken place together with the mounting suspicion that innovation has become a reified notion, a kind of catch-all phrase that is devoid of meaning. This book addresses this tension based on an ethnographic analysis of innovation consultants’ practices and norms of innovation as they develop, implement, and inculcate them in different institutional sites in the United States such as innovation workshops given to business executives and entrepreneurs, innovation courses given in leading business schools, and best-selling books. The book argues that business innovation is neither the empty shell that its detractors claim it to be nor is it the holy grail of organizational success that its supporters insist it is. Rather, innovation consultants constantly need to negotiate the tension between their desire to come up with specific practices that could lead to ideas for new monetizable products and services—a goal that requires time and sensitivity to context—and an economic and organizational environment that prizes speed and instantaneous results—achievements that require consultants to decontextualize and decouple the innovation process from the market to which it purports to refer. In so arguing, the book unpacks both the potentialities and contradictions of business innovation in the contemporary accelerated age.