ISPP@10 Anniversary „Has innovation (critique) run out of stream? Where to even begin…”

The research group “Innovation, Society, and Public Policy” (ISPP), led by Prof. Sebastian Pfotenhauer, is celebrating its tenth anniversary and raising the question of what has become of innovation critique and what kinds of critique are needed today. 

 At the celebratory symposium on April 10, 2026, current ISPP members, former research group members, visiting scholars, and supporters came together to reflect on ten years of social science research on innovation. 

 As Sheila Jasanoff noted at the beginning, ISPP has been – and continues to be – a test bed in many respects: establishing a social science master’s program, co-founding an STS department at a technical university, and coordinating large transdisciplinary research projects with a central STS role all required a spirit of experimentation and a supportive, collaborative community. 

 In a public panel discussion, Alan Irwin, Iris Eisenberger, Brice Laurent, Erik Aarden, and Margo Boenig-Liptsin discussed future paths of innovation critique with moderator Alexander Wentland. Among other points, it was argued that STS must actively engage when we define transformation and how we understand scaling. Change, they emphasized, is not something to merely react to; rather, it emerges when societies focus on a particular issue. 

 In the afternoon, ISPP members presented their current research topics. Together with international respondents, they discussed which questions and critical approaches are relevant for regional innovation cultures, digital twins, mobility experiments, technological sovereignty in quantum technologies, and large transdisciplinary research clusters such as TransforM. 

 To conclude on a lighter note, the guests faced the challenging questions of the famous ISPP Jeopardy quiz.