Innovation

Abstract

Sociological accounts of innovation are concerned with challenging the conventional wisdom that highlights the personal qualities and efforts of an individual inventor as the explanation of success. Alternatively, sociological explanations elucidate the social conditions that cultivate or inhibit innovation such as institutional, social network, and organizational arrangements. Recombination, or the notion that novelty emerges through merging two or more objects or ideas, is a common theme in the sociology literature on innovation. It figures in prominent strands of research within organizational sociology as well as in actor‐network theory. Several promising avenues for future research are also discussed, including inequality in the innovation process, the need for a better understanding of the antecedents of innovation in developing countries, and critically important issues related to the social impacts of innovation.