Abstract This paper pluralizes the “dark side of innovation” discourse through a fourfold taxonomy: false positives, negative externalities, false negatives, and undone positives. As these dimensions reflect the contested nature of innovations, controversy is framed as an opportunity to (re)direct novelty toward societal welfare. Central to this redirection is an economic geography of controversial innovation, highlighting the tension between exnovating “destructive creation” and enabling the “creative destruction” of alternative futures. Spatial Pockets of Innovation are conceptualized as geographical places of peripheral opportunity, offering the cushioning and institutional slack required to develop, scrutinize, and legitimize contested and unconventional novelty.
Johannes Glückler (Mon,) studied this question.