Sebastian Pfotenhauer
Biographic Data
| ID | 180591 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Sebastian Pfotenhauer |
| GIVEN NAMES | Sebastian |
| FAMILY NAME | Pfotenhauer |
| SIGNATURE | PFOTENHAUER S |
| AFFILIATIONS | Technical University of Munich |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-0343-2699 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 12 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 114 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 12 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2012 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Go to Another State”
Innovation is regularly depicted as the answer to regional socioeconomic decline and deindustrialization. Yet, the results of regional innovation strategies are frequently underwhelming and contested, leading citizens to question the promises of innovation and policymakers to doubt constituents’ willingness to embrace change. This paper investigates how innovation-centered revitalization policies land in “Rust Belt” regions—the supposed lost hint…
Constructing the “Cocreative Citizen”
“Cocreation” has emerged as a prominent discourse and set of participatory practices in innovation that aims to engage diverse actors in supposedly inclusive, egalitarian, and empowering ways to jointly produce better innovation outcomes. In this article, we explore how such cocreation practices shape subjectivity—producing what we call a mode of “cocreative citizenship”—by linking technological innovation to an implied duty for citizens to parti…
How Neurotech Start-Ups Envision Ethical Futures
Like many ethics debates surrounding emerging technologies, neuroethics is increasingly concerned with the private sector. Here, entrepreneurial visions and claims of how neurotechnology innovation will revolutionize society—from brain-computer-interfaces to neural enhancement and cognitive phenotyping—are confronted with public and policy concerns about the risks and ethical challenges related to such innovations. But while neuroethics framework…
From “More Innovation” to “Better Innovation”
This paper departs from the observation that there seems to be a new appetite for critique and reflexivity in innovation policy and innovation studies (IS), owed in part to an abundance of recent innovation controversies. In what follows, I offer a cautiously optimistic take on what this new appetite means for STS’s relationship with mainstream innovation settings and why STS knowledge seems to be particularly en vogue right now. I explore three …
Maintaining innovation
This article explores how innovation logics infiltrate problem and value definitions in maintenance and repair, and how innovation itself depends on considerable, often invisible care work beyond the seemingly smooth entrepreneurial narratives. We build on a growing body of work in STS that investigates the relationship between innovation and maintenance and repair. This literature argues that the obsession with innovation crowds out attention to…
Fixing Technology with Society
Long presented as a universal policy-recipe for social prosperity and economic growth, the promise of innovation seems to be increasingly in question, giving way to a new vision of progress in which society is advanced as a central enabler of technoeconomic development. Frameworks such as “Responsible” or “Mission-oriented” Innovation, for example, have become commonplace parlance and practice in the governance of the innovation–society nexus. In…
The politics of scaling
A fixation on 'scaling up' has captured current innovation discourses and, with it, political and economic life at large. Perhaps most visible in the rise of platform technologies, big data and concerns about a new era of monopolies, scalability thinking has also permeated public policy in the search for solutions to 'grand societal challenges', 'mission-oriented innovation' or transformations through experimental 'living labs'. In this paper, we…
Challenging the “deficit model” of innovation
Testing future societies? Developing a framework for test beds and living labs as instruments of innovation governance
Test beds and living labs have emerged as a prominent approach to foster innovation across geographical regions and technical domains. They feed on the popular “grand societal challenges” discourse and the growing insight that adequate policy responses to these challenges will require drastic transformations of technology and society alike. Test beds and living labs represent an experimental, co-creative approach to innovation policy that aims to…
Panacea or diagnosis? Imaginaries of innovation and the 'MIT model' in three political cultures
Innovation studies continue to struggle with an apparent disconnect between innovation's supposedly universal dynamics and a sense that policy frameworks and associated instruments of innovation are often ineffectual or even harmful when transported across regions or countries. Using a cross-country comparative analysis of three implementations of the 'MIT model' of innovation in the UK, Portugal and Singapore, we show how key features in the des…
Science and Technology Development in the Gulf States
Seeding Change through International University Partnerships
Panacea or diagnosis? Imaginaries of innovation and the 'MIT model' in three political cultures
Innovation studies continue to struggle with an apparent disconnect between innovation's supposedly universal dynamics and a sense that policy frameworks and associated instruments of innovation are often ineffectual or even harmful when transported across regions or countries. Using a cross-country comparative analysis of three implementations of the 'MIT model' of innovation in the UK, Portugal and Singapore, we show how key features in the des…
The politics of scaling
A fixation on 'scaling up' has captured current innovation discourses and, with it, political and economic life at large. Perhaps most visible in the rise of platform technologies, big data and concerns about a new era of monopolies, scalability thinking has also permeated public policy in the search for solutions to 'grand societal challenges', 'mission-oriented innovation' or transformations through experimental 'living labs'. In this paper, we…
Seeding Change through International University Partnerships
Maintaining innovation
This article explores how innovation logics infiltrate problem and value definitions in maintenance and repair, and how innovation itself depends on considerable, often invisible care work beyond the seemingly smooth entrepreneurial narratives. We build on a growing body of work in STS that investigates the relationship between innovation and maintenance and repair. This literature argues that the obsession with innovation crowds out attention to…
Fixing Technology with Society
Long presented as a universal policy-recipe for social prosperity and economic growth, the promise of innovation seems to be increasingly in question, giving way to a new vision of progress in which society is advanced as a central enabler of technoeconomic development. Frameworks such as “Responsible” or “Mission-oriented” Innovation, for example, have become commonplace parlance and practice in the governance of the innovation–society nexus. In…
Seeding Change through International University Partnerships
Science and Technology Development in the Gulf States
Panacea or diagnosis? Imaginaries of innovation and the 'MIT model' in three political cultures
Innovation studies continue to struggle with an apparent disconnect between innovation's supposedly universal dynamics and a sense that policy frameworks and associated instruments of innovation are often ineffectual or even harmful when transported across regions or countries. Using a cross-country comparative analysis of three implementations of the 'MIT model' of innovation in the UK, Portugal and Singapore, we show how key features in the des…
Challenging the “deficit model” of innovation
Testing future societies? Developing a framework for test beds and living labs as instruments of innovation governance
Test beds and living labs have emerged as a prominent approach to foster innovation across geographical regions and technical domains. They feed on the popular “grand societal challenges” discourse and the growing insight that adequate policy responses to these challenges will require drastic transformations of technology and society alike. Test beds and living labs represent an experimental, co-creative approach to innovation policy that aims to…
The politics of scaling
A fixation on 'scaling up' has captured current innovation discourses and, with it, political and economic life at large. Perhaps most visible in the rise of platform technologies, big data and concerns about a new era of monopolies, scalability thinking has also permeated public policy in the search for solutions to 'grand societal challenges', 'mission-oriented innovation' or transformations through experimental 'living labs'. In this paper, we…
Fixing Technology with Society
Long presented as a universal policy-recipe for social prosperity and economic growth, the promise of innovation seems to be increasingly in question, giving way to a new vision of progress in which society is advanced as a central enabler of technoeconomic development. Frameworks such as “Responsible” or “Mission-oriented” Innovation, for example, have become commonplace parlance and practice in the governance of the innovation–society nexus. In…
How Neurotech Start-Ups Envision Ethical Futures
Like many ethics debates surrounding emerging technologies, neuroethics is increasingly concerned with the private sector. Here, entrepreneurial visions and claims of how neurotechnology innovation will revolutionize society—from brain-computer-interfaces to neural enhancement and cognitive phenotyping—are confronted with public and policy concerns about the risks and ethical challenges related to such innovations. But while neuroethics framework…
From “More Innovation” to “Better Innovation”
This paper departs from the observation that there seems to be a new appetite for critique and reflexivity in innovation policy and innovation studies (IS), owed in part to an abundance of recent innovation controversies. In what follows, I offer a cautiously optimistic take on what this new appetite means for STS’s relationship with mainstream innovation settings and why STS knowledge seems to be particularly en vogue right now. I explore three …
Maintaining innovation
This article explores how innovation logics infiltrate problem and value definitions in maintenance and repair, and how innovation itself depends on considerable, often invisible care work beyond the seemingly smooth entrepreneurial narratives. We build on a growing body of work in STS that investigates the relationship between innovation and maintenance and repair. This literature argues that the obsession with innovation crowds out attention to…
Constructing the “Cocreative Citizen”
“Cocreation” has emerged as a prominent discourse and set of participatory practices in innovation that aims to engage diverse actors in supposedly inclusive, egalitarian, and empowering ways to jointly produce better innovation outcomes. In this article, we explore how such cocreation practices shape subjectivity—producing what we call a mode of “cocreative citizenship”—by linking technological innovation to an implied duty for citizens to parti…
Go to Another State”
Innovation is regularly depicted as the answer to regional socioeconomic decline and deindustrialization. Yet, the results of regional innovation strategies are frequently underwhelming and contested, leading citizens to question the promises of innovation and policymakers to doubt constituents’ willingness to embrace change. This paper investigates how innovation-centered revitalization policies land in “Rust Belt” regions—the supposed lost hint…
Political science (8 works) · Economics (5 works) · University-Industry-Government Innovation Models (5 works) · Business (4 works) · Law (4 works) · Public relations (4 works) · Innovation, Technology, and Society (3 works) · Politics (3 works) · Sociology (3 works) · Sustainability and Climate Change Governance (3 works)