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Often described as irrational, transient and related to the lack of knowledge of positive effects or anxiety about new things (“neophobia”) (Bauer 2017), resistance to innovation can take on many other meanings. There is indeed rationality in the arguments of actors who do not adhere to innovation (Godin and Vinck 2017), which Cañibano et al. (2017) state very simply through the concept of “novation”: some actors formulate non-innovative strategies and succeed in implementing them. They therefore have “good reasons”, entirely rational, for not adhering to, not using, and ultimately not appropriating an innovation. The conception of rationality is here open to the pursuit of goals and to the engagement of plural actions, including those that push to innovate, and those that lead to the absence of innovation, even if this clashes with the contemporary call to innovate permanently and in every respect.

Provided that the choices that led to non-adoption are considered to be sensible and well-founded, resistance can be considered an asset that can contribute to the innovation process (Bauer 2017). Not adopting an innovation is indeed an adaptive strategy that it is important to understand as such (Kimberly 1981) in order to be able to alter the trajectory in question, or to energize other projects. Studies on this subject are few and far between (Thomas et al. 2017) and do not sufficiently reveal the actions of resistance. However, an in-depth analysis of resistance to innovation, also known as “re-innovation”, allows us to make sense of it (ibid.). The rejection of certain technologies, for example, carries messages, identifications and meanings in relation to hegemony or domination-based rationale. It is not only an act of non-consumption, to be approached from a strictly economic angle, but also a question of alignment and coherence compared to a vision of the world and a set of values.

In the same way, the unsuccessful trajectories of innovations (a term that is preferable to that of failure) are rich in teachings. Vinck (2017) approaches them as collective learning processes (learning by failing). In fact, organizations learn more effectively from their failures (and the failures of others) than from their successes (Cyert and March 1992), which are often analyzed in a simplistic and superficial manner. Conversely, when things do not go as planned, there is fertile ground for an in-depth study to identify the causes of the failure. This is not only about transparency, but also about the search for long-term efficiency. Learning in this way implies accepting to testify about one’s professional activity in a way that is a priori devaluing, in a culture marked by the call to succeed, to excel and to promote oneself. Although it is an integral part of professional life, failure is rarely openly discussed (Vinck 2017), which is another effect of the pro-success bias mentioned above.

KEY POINT – Not all research on innovation escapes the shortcomings mentioned above (excessive rationalization, emphasis on disruptive innovations to the detriment of imitation and incremental innovations, poor integration of resistance and failures, etc.). The whole point of critical studies of innovation is to provide hindsight to oppose these unthoughts, which are at the origin of a form of partial blindness (Godin and Vinck 2017). To remedy this, Bauer (2017) recommends observing innovations in progress, rather than retrospectively; studying failures in order to understand, by contrast, the origins of success; analyzing abandonments following adoptions; taking into account feedback from users (re-innovation); or even considering the reasons for rejecting an innovation.