Is the value created necessarily associated with money? On the connections between an innovation process and its monetary dimension: The case of Solibro's thin-film solar cells

Abstract

While IMP research has implicitly identified the intricate and unfair connection between innovation and its monetary dimension, there is a lack of studies which explicitly focus on this connection. Consequently, there is also a lack of concepts with which to investigate the role of money and its connections with other resources in the business landscape. This paper aims to contribute to an increased understanding of this phenomena, by explicitly investigating the connection between the social-material and the monetary dimensions of an innovation journey. We analyze a case study on new type of thin-film solar cells; an innovation journey in which both the social-material and monetary dimensions involve public and private actors and transcend national borders. We identify five key connections between social-material resources and the monetary dimension: (1) Monetary flows finance new resource combinations; (2) the monetary dimension evaluates social-material resources, even though it does so in highly subjective, erratic and negotiated ways; (3-4) business deals and monetary flows both enable and block actions on social-material resources; and (5) business deals distribute, although very unevenly, the costs and benefits of social-material resources among the involved actors.