Agency, directionality, location and the geographic situatedness of knowledge making: The politics of framing in innovation research on energy

Review article, 2023

In this conceptual review, we use the concept of “framing” to explore how scholars work with innovation. Using a thematically and geographically diverse sample of 88 articles, we focus on sustainability transitions as research domain, energy as sector and literature review as method. Framings of innovation differ by themes such as agency, directionality and location, as well as onto-epistemological categories such as envisioned academic contribution and geographic situatedness of knowledge making. The implications of some framings are concerning, such as that econometric analysis of firm-level innovation in higher income countries can proxy for innovation globally, or that donors are the principal stimuli of innovation in lower income countries. This research shows how groups, places or outcomes are included or excluded in different domains of innovation research. We propose a heuristic tool which seeks to render explicit the boundaries for innovation drawn in any article, to aid reflexivity and epistemic humility.