Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Innovation And Degrowth, Steffen Roth, Miguel Perez-Valls, Jari Kaivo-Oja

Prof. Dr. Dr. Steffen Roth

Innovation is essential for economic growth. The dominant view therefore is that innovation and human development are inseparable. However, ecological economists have argued that an insatiable appetite for the creative destruction leads to the self-destruction of humankind. The key component of the growth engine (Jackson, 2011), innovation, constantly renovates the iron cage of consumerism that eventually consumes the planet to excess (Urry, 2010), while popular attempts to link innovation and sustainability constantly fail to green the economy as they do not challenge the overall functionality of the growth engine (Schneider et al., 2010; van Griethuysen, 2010). Innovation is therefore considered …