Emotional Drivers of Innovation: Exploring the Moral Economy of Prototypes (Science Studies)

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.

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