"Innovators must remain free to experiment”

Dominique Foray, honorary professor at EPFL, explores the current challenges surrounding innovation in his latest book.  © Thomas Baumann

Dominique Foray, honorary professor at EPFL, explores the current challenges surrounding innovation in his latest book. © Thomas Baumann

Dominique Foray, honorary professor at EPFL, explores the current challenges surrounding innovation in his latest book. He examines how the delicate balance between economics, social norms and technology shapes its development.

“Innovation? It's when new ideas meet the economic and societal worlds. Otherwise, they remain technologies in a laboratory.” Innovation is also the primary focus of Dominique Foray’s research, to which he has devoted a large part of his career. After more than 20 years of teaching, the former holder of the Chair of Economics and Management of Innovation at the College of Management of Technology has brought together his thoughts and knowledge of this constantly evolving sector in a new book. In Innovations, une économie pour les temps à venir, published by La Découverte, the honorary professor raises a fundamental question: is it possible to impose a degree of control on innovation, without endangering the creativity that fuels it?

A lover of climbing and mountains, the professor and member of the Swiss Science Council likes to compare innovation to climbing holds. “A new technology really has to cling to the wall of the economy to be adopted. It has to find the right holds, which can be consumer preference, reasonable costs, or 'fair' competition with existing products or technologies. It's the interplay of these factors that ultimately determines whether people choose to invest in one technology over another,” he explains.

After showing how the power of innovation has transformed life over the past 150 years in the first part of his book, the professor turns to the future: how might it continue to evolve in today's context? “Today, we expect innovation to serve major problems, from climate change to health. To achieve this, we need to strike the right balance between the freedom to experiment and a strategic guidance of innovation.”

Mending the market

As every innovation carries potential downsides and negative effects, the challenge lies in reviewing the framework that surrounds it. Dominique Foray argues that three fundamental pillars are needed to better guide innovation and prevent it from going astray: “We need to adapt economic mechanisms, prepare technologies and influence social behavior”.

The first aspect concerns the market. “We need to make it a little ‘less foolish’, which means introducing regulations. I'm talking about fixing markets so that, for example, prices accurately reflect all costs.” He cites industrial fishing as an example. “It's efficient and ensures widespread access to affordable fish, but this price doesn't take into account the cost of the ocean’s exploitation, a common good that nobody pays for. When prices truly reflect all costs, including those related to the use of nature, innovation will move towards methods that reduce these costs.”

Transforming technologies requires public research. “At universities of applied sciences, for example, we develop sustainable technologies that enable entrepreneurs to launch innovation projects in the right direction.” Finally, social norms also play a crucial role in guiding innovation, especially towards sustainability.

Dominique Foray uses the example of air transport to illustrate the delicate balance between these three pillars. “Today, we can see that taxes don't really reduce the number of passengers. And we can't keep raising them ad infinitum – otherwise we'll go back to the days when air travel was reserved for the wealthy. Achieving sobriety is very challenging, as most people are not yet willing to give up flying. Nevertheless, progress is possible with massive public investment in alternative modes of transport. In my opinion, what’s most urgently needed in this sector is to accelerate the development of new air transport technologies, such as sustainable fuels and hydrogen-powered aircraft, in order to complement taxation and facilitate the energy transition. And we know today how to accelerate the development of a technology.”

AI for good jobs

The final key element for an innovation to take off is the narrative that surrounds it – that is, a social or national consensus on both the problem and its possible solutions. “At the turn of the 2000s, for example, people didn't yet perceive the urgency associated with renewable energies. Then, gradually, a stronger narrative emerged, bringing in its wake increasingly efficient technologies and a wave of innovations.”

Finally, the rise of artificial intelligence is further shaking up the rules of the game. “Once again, it raises the question of direction”, believes the professor, who emphasizes the importance of guiding AI towards the creation of quality jobs: “Jobs that provide a decent wage, autonomy in work and career development prospects – a fundamental element of an economy, with positive impacts on health, family life and social ties. We need to think about how to steer artificial intelligence toward enriching human work, rather than replacing it,” he concludes.

References

Dominique Foray, Innovations, une économie pour les temps à venir, Ed. La Découverte, 320 p.


Author: Rebecca Mosimann

Source: Teaching Portal

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