Innovation and financialisation: Unpicking a close association

In this paper I seek to examine the rather neglected association between innovation and the ideology of financialisation. I begin by exploring the existing critical work on the concept of innovation in the organisational literature. I then draw out a different account of innovation by examining the role the concept plays within the ideology of financialisation and situate it as a financial buzzword. I also briefly examine the social and political importance of innovation as a financial buzzword by drawing on examples of how it is used by government and the university sector. In unpicking the concept of innovation and its ideological association with financialisation in given instances, I hope to show that it is a pervasive buzzword that masks and often actually helps to facilitate increasing processes of commercialisation and financialisation in particular social fields.