Paper short abstract:

Many innovation strategies are supposed to represent rational, quasi-algorithmic sets of procedures but in practice they depend for their success on the innovator's emotional constitution. Emotions thus turn out to be crucial resources for generating organizational futures.

Paper long abstract:

In the past few years, routinized business innovation has become a key dimension of the business world, a fact that has found expression in the rise of a class of professional innovation consultants. A significant share of these consultants have created a market for themselves by convincing business executives that they have managed to systematize the fast production of ideas for future products and services by developing rational, rule-governed innovation strategies. Based on ethnographic fieldwork with innovation consultants in the U.S., I analyze a specific innovation strategy as it is utilized and applied in practice. I argue that although this innovation strategy is supposed to represent a rational, quasi-algorithmic set of procedures that can be automatically executed by anyone, including a computer software, in practice it depends for its success on the innovator's emotional constitution. Emotions thus turn out to be crucial organizational resources for generating organizational futures.