Innovation and Sustainability

Prof. David LANE, University of Modena & Reggio Emilia, Italy. For a long time, the idea of novelty was generally regarded with great suspicion; in the last few centuries, it is increasingly viewed in a favourable light, so much so that it seems appropriate to characterize the developed and developing world in the last few decades as "The Innovation Society". In this talk, I describe some aspects of social, technological, economic and cultural innovation processes, particularly those that link transformations in artefacts, attributions and social organization in a positive feedback dynamic, and the ideology that justifies and shapes the way in which this dynamic is currently playing out. I then raise some issues concerning the sustainability of this dynamic.