Читать книгу Innovation in Sport. Innovation Trajectories and Process Optimization онлайн

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Nowadays, everyone is invited to innovate, everywhere and all the time (Gaglio 2017). This “setting in motion” is supported and stimulated by the creation of investment funds, incubators or dedicated places that encourage actors from different backgrounds to “take action” (Mootoosamy 2016), without necessarily attaching great importance to the evaluation of the real positive effects that are brought about, as well as to the collateral effects generated (Godin and Vinck 2017). Entrenched as an ideal, innovation in fact tends to constitute a value in itself – innovate to innovate (Gaglio 2011) – or even an ideology – innovate or perish (Oki 2019) – where stability and conservatism are mostly described in a pejorative way. It refers indiscriminately to everything that is good, new and useful, likely to play a role in the socio-economic and societal challenges facing modern societies (Oki 2019). It is no longer a matter of challenging the established political order, but rather of reinforcing and conforming to it. This sacralization is nothing new: more than 50 years ago, Rogers (1995) pointed out the existence of a “pro-innovation bias” in Western societies, which consisted of considering innovation as fundamentally and systematically positive for the economy and society. We expect innovation, especially innovation based on science and technology, to lead us out of stagnation, or even economic and social crises (Joly 2019; Lechevalier and Laugier 2019). Innovation is said to be economically virtuous: there is indeed a myth according to which the maximization of value obtained through innovation is not merely a source of competitiveness, but also of trickle-down to other spheres of the economy (maintaining employment, protecting social models), according to a very classic but widely contested theory in economics. More broadly, innovation is increasingly seen as the solution to major challenges, in very different sectors (global warming, food security, depletion of natural resources, demographic aging, etc.) (Joly 2019).