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The history of the concept of innovation is a fascinating one. It reveals that, contrary to popular belief, innovation has not always been viewed positively. Plato did not hesitate, in Book VII of Laws, to plead for tradition. Because innovation leads young people to despise what is old and to value what is new, it is, according to him, the worst of scourges for a polis, because it leads to instability. Ironically, “the same people who have challenged innovation for centuries – governments – are the same people who have de-challenged it, making innovation an instrument of economic policy” [GOD 14].

However, the massification of the production and consumption of innovations is nowadays questionable. What is the function of innovation in modern societies? What kinds of relationships does our modern society have with innovation? And more fundamentally, what innovations do we want for which societies?

In order to provide some answers to the above questions, this chapter invites us to think about the meaning of innovation. We will thus see that while the question of the meaning of innovation is an old question, over time it has been pushed into the background or even overshadowed by the question of the meaning of innovation for society. This observation will lead us to advocate for the reintegration of the meaning of innovation. The question then arises as to how to proceed. We will then present the Penser le Sens de l’Innovation (P.S.I.) approach (thinking about the meaning of innovation), which emphasizes that the question of meaning must be considered from the points of view of both direction and signification.