This book, Emotional Drivers of Innovation, by Dr. F. Sörgel derives from her doctoral thesis, which she successfully defended at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin in the summer of 2023. It focuses on how ideas originate and evolve through emotions and experience, particularly within biomedical technologies. It posits that ideas and their later materialisation are an expression of what one feels and cares about (as a result of individual experience), be it oneself, the environment, or the future and that this is a relationship that takes place in mutual dependence, whether in the context of biomedical technologies or beyond.
This book is situated within the realm of Science and Technology Studies and contributes to both. In the realm of Science Studies, this book examines the interplay of different disciplines and their inherent norms and beliefs in the act of fabrication. Following some eminent scholars, the author illustrates that researchers are not impartial agents but rather influenced by the established structures in which they operate. Simultaneously, this book contributes to Technology Studies by examining the genesis of ideas as prototypes within the context of their conception and the surrounding world and structures, such as incubators, into which these ideas are born.
Journal of Economic Sociology publishes the first chapter. “The Sensitivity of The New,” in which the author explains the main ideas of the research and describes in detail the structure of the monograph.