An investigation of the marathon of emotions involved in innovation processes providing a rare insight into the decision-making of technology development.

Innovation is ubiquitous and has become a universal term that is indispensable to describe interventions, projects, or products. Franziska Sörgel argues that emotions influence innovations as they are inherent in initial ideas, expectations and habitual evaluation criteria that impact the development process. Instead of assuming that the innovation process is subject to rational and linear creativity, the study adopts the notion of moral economies by Lorraine Daston as a space for negotiation. Such an approach enables decision-makers to question the evaluation criteria and patterns for technological developments before implementing them in society.

Autorentext

Franziska Sörgel is a Post-Doc at the Institute for Technology Assessment and Systems Analysis (ITAS) at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. The cultural anthropologist received her doctorate at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin in 2023. Her research focuses on anthropological perspectives of emotional evaluation and decision-making and alternative forms of impact assessment.