Narrative neoliberalization

Grand narratives are hegemonic frameworks for understanding our world. François Lyotard developed the notion of metanarrative in The Postmodern Condition (1984), a piece on the philosophy of science and technology that was commissioned by a group of universities in Quebec. There, he argued that postmodernism is defined by a scepticism towards metanarrative. It is a scepticism towards stories that are reductionist and universal. Such stories are glossy simplifications that leave little room for alternative claims. For example, Lyotard examined the ‘Enlightenment’ metanarrative of Western science and its uncomplicated and universal claims about knowledge and truth. The Enlightenment metanarrative is present in innovation studies. Several other metanarratives are also worth mentioning in a broader critical innovation studies agenda. I will make some suggestions in Chapter 8. But for now, let’s focus our attention on the metanarrative effects of neoliberalism.

At the outset of this book, I argued that neoliberalism is a grand narrative of concern within innovation studies. It is not one coherent idea, but rather a set of variegated political values that have persistent power (Peck, 2010a; Peck and Theodore, 2019). So, we can think about neoliberalism as a ‘messy grand narrative’ (Phelan, 2007, p 328) or as a variegated process – that is, ‘neoliberalization’ (Peck and Tickell, 2002; Brenner et al, 2010). This positions us to deconstruct the narrative neoliberalization of stories about innovation. Here, I am not accusing any individual authors of being deliberately and secretly political when they write about innovation. I am not even suggesting that neoliberalism is a coherent political belief. Rather, I am saying that narrative neoliberalization is a default – or ‘zombie’ (Peck, 2010b, p 104) – approach to writing about innovation. It is simply the norm for stories about innovation to feature businesses as the main characters and for those stories to resolve in market success. In other words, neoliberalism is metanarrative.

Restorying analysis

What other stories and voices are set aside in the process of narrative neoliberalization? The postmodern response is to ‘restory’ the grand narrative (Boje, 2001, p 10). This involves taking multiple ‘local stories’ (2001, p 35) and assembling them in ways that resist or ‘shatter’ the grand narrative. The bits and pieces of local story are what David Boje (2001, p 7) calls ‘antenarrative’. He uses ‘ante’ as a double entendre: an antenarrative is both a precursor to a complete narrative and it is a bet/gamble on narrative possibilities (‘ante up!’). Metanarratives influence and control how we might assemble these antenarrative fragments. They suggest the most legitimate way to narrate a story; they encourage monologue. Boje has lamented that ‘so much of what passes for academic narrative analysis in organization studies seems to rely upon sequential, single-voiced renderings’ (2001, p 9). But we have options for ‘semantic innovation’ (Ricoeur, 1984).

We can disrupt the monologue through dialogue. Boje and Smith called for the development of a dialogical approach to storytelling in entrepreneurship studies – one that uses ‘multiple retrospective narrations’ (2010, p 310). Elsewhere, my co-authors and I have responded to that call and restoried the University of Waterloo ‘entrepreneurial ecosystem’ as an entrepreneurship-producing factory, an isolating crowd, a supportive community, and a totalizing cult (MacNeil et al, 2021). The end goal of that work was deconstruction rather than composite narration (Vaara et al, 2016). Our alternate narratives were not meant to come together as a composite whole. They were incompatible with one another and worked together to problematize the idea that places (or ‘ecosystems’) can or should have stable and coherent entrepreneurship stories.

Similarly, the three short stories that follow work together to problematize the neoliberalization of innovation narratives. Businesses are not the main characters in this chapter. Instead, each story is centred on a different public organization: Canada’s Naval Research Establishment, the BIO, and Dalhousie University’s Oceanography Institute. Furthermore, market success is not the ultimate resolution in these stories; instead, the stories involve conflict and resolution around different public goods.

My narrative approach

Some readers might object that this approach to storytelling is too complex for their liking. They might prefer to consume history in one singular, modern narration. Others might accept plurivocality – the acknowledgement of several possible perspectives on the past (that is, postmodern). Either way, most readers are accustomed to one story at a time about how an industry, market, or technology emerged. And here I am asking you to read three different interconnected accounts (in addition to the three disconnected accounts I presented in Chapter 3). Like Raghu Garud and his colleagues, I am interested in the value of narrative relationalism for innovation studies (Garud et al, 2010, 2014). But while their work has focused on innovation as a narrative process, my work here is focused on innovation research as a historiographic process. Building on ideas about how we know the past (the subject of Chapter 3), this chapter considers how we might write or narrate the past differently. Like Durepos (2015), I am interested in understanding the past through narrative multiplicity – through amodern histories.

This is quite a different historiographic instrumentality than the default. Vaara et al have highlighted the value of poststructuralist narrative analysis ‘to problematize prevailing or dominant narratives’ and ‘to uncover the central role of emerging narratives in organizational processes’ (2016, p 15). Mol and Law have advocated a ‘multi-voiced form of investigative story-telling’ (2004, p 59). And Kirsch et al have written against the singular retrospective view of industry emergence. They recommend a ‘deeper, contextual approach [that] reads historical evidence from the past “forward” in ways that do not foreclose alternative organizational paths’ (Kirsch et al, 2014, p 229). The story would be simpler if I worked backwards from a present-day industry to construct one history. But we saw this in Chapter 2 – in the official government history, Defined by the Sea (Government of Nova Scotia, 2012). We have seen that looking to the past from a present-day neoliberal standpoint will always lead to stories about market-dominant evolutionary processes. This encourages public organizations to be framed as supporting characters.

Instead, I began work on this chapter with the three public research organizations that stood out during my time at the Nova Scotia Public Archives. A fourth organization, the Nova Scotia Research Foundation, also stood out in the archival records, but its mandate was economic development. Although that organization left interesting traces of ocean technology development, I have chosen to focus on the three other organizations with scientific mandates. I followed actors related to each of those organizations across many meandering traces, going back no further than the Second World War, and stopping when I reached a saturation point in my understanding of: (a) how each organization enacted ocean science; and (b) the kinds of relations each actor established with other public and private organizations. I treat each of these organizations as an actor-network (Latour, 1987; Law, 1994) and explore their efforts to produce knowledge, embed this knowledge in technology, and sometimes transfer it to other organizations. As you will see, the resulting stories do not unfold along the same timelines and do not all conclude in a common present day. I chose to begin and end each story at a juncture relevant to that organization. Although overlapping, each story is told separately. This way, there is no one universal path to the present day; each story is told for the sake of its own main character and not for the sake of understanding a present-day industry.

Naval research in Halifax, 1940–70

The events of the Second World War and then the Cold War changed the way the Royal Canadian Navy would know the ocean. The fledgling Navy had relied on traditional seafaring knowledge up to 1939: ‘defence science still had no formal place in the activities of the Government of Canada when war broke out’ (Longard, 1993, p 1). Then German aircraft started dropping magnetic mines into the Atlantic. These mines were activated by the passing magnetic field of any steel-hulled vessel. Such an unconventional weapon inspired the Navy to consult scientists. Conveniently, General Andrew McNaughton, Commander of the Canadian Forces in England, ‘spoke science’ (he held an MSc and had been President of the National Research Council prior to the war). McNaughton appears to have worked with the Chief of Naval Staff (Admiral Nelles) and Acting National Research Council President (Dr C. J. MacKenzie) to engage two Dalhousie University physics professors on a part-time basis in March 1940 (Longard, 1993). Drs George Henderson and John Johnstone were hired by the National Research Council and immediately seconded to the Navy. They assembled a team and began a version of the nail-wrapped-in-copper-wire experiment conducted by so many school children, albeit one where the ‘nails’ were ships and the goal was a near-neutral (degaussed) magnetic field. The first degaussing range in North America opened in the Bedford Basin (the interior of Halifax Harbour) in November 1940. Here, vessels could be outfitted and tested before crossing the Atlantic. This work was expanded in 1942 when a larger degaussing (and hydrophone) range opened in the main channel of the harbour. The ‘Anti-Magnetic Mines Office’ (later the ‘Degaussing Experimental Office’) performed degaussing tests on an incredible 35,000 ships in Halifax Harbour during the war (Longard, 1993, p 10). The success of degaussing earned this growing team of scientists a move from cramped Dockyard offices to HMCS Stadacona in 1944. They were then designated as ‘Naval Research Establishment’ or ‘NRE’ (DREA, ca. 1985, p 1). With this bump in status, the research group began to tackle new tasks.

The previous year, the Navy had called upon oceanographer Dr Harry Hachey from the Fisheries Research Board in St Andrews, NB, ‘to advise on the East Coast problem’ (Longard, 1993, p 51). German U-boats were lurking outside the harbour, but there were significant problems detecting the submarines with ASDIC (the British version of sonar, or ‘sound navigation and ranging’). Dr Hachey did not join NRE, but helped the staff begin collecting and analysing bathythermograph (temperature versus depth) observations. The importance of these observations was heightened after the war, when German submarines were replaced by Soviet ones (Pigott, 2011). Along the way, NRE discovered that submarines were able to dive beneath a ‘sound channel’ of warm surface water off the Atlantic coast. Since fluctuating ocean conditions were therefore a major variable in acoustic submarine detection, the Navy needed regular oceanographic data throughout the Second World War (and the Cold War). NRE collected this data for naval operations until the BIO took over the task in 1960 (Longard, 1993, p 52). This line of research eventually led to ASDIC/sonar improvements, research partnerships with the Americans, NRE’s invention of variable depth sonar (VDS), and the establishment of physical oceanography as a discipline in Canada. A breakthrough, the VDS ‘towed-sonar’ system (named ‘CAST IX’) would be built by Cossor Canada Ltd. in 1957.

While anti-submarine research was beginning in 1943, the fledgling research group in Halifax was also making a breakthrough on the problem of sea-water corrosion. All those degaussing experiments led Kenneth Barnard to develop cathodic protection. The same basic technique remains in use today by navies and commercial fleets worldwide. Barnard’s innovation changed ‘the whole concept of ship refits, saving untold millions of dollars’ (Longard, 1993, p 41) (those interested in the technical details may refer to the patent document (US No. 3,012,959); see also Barnard, 1959).

As the war in Europe ended, NRE temporarily shrank in size. Of the 46 personnel assigned to NRE in 1945, only 11 remained in 1947. Pensions for veterans allowed many to return to school, and the degaussing range and NRE research ship were decommissioned. However, this period of ‘peace time’ defence research was fleeting (and research topics were unchanged). The Defence Act of 1947 then established the Defence Research Board, and NRE was reinvigorated. In five years, staffing grew to 131 people (and approximately 200 by the mid-1950s) (Longard, 1993, p 5). A new laboratory opened in 1952, and in Cold War fashion its cafeteria was reinforced as a bomb shelter (Longard, 1993, p 7). Much of the physical oceanography and acoustics research continued under an NRE department called the ‘Anti-Submarine Warfare Service Projects Unit’ (Longard, 1993, p 6). One of this unit’s successes was the development of sonobuoy systems that proved superior to the Allies’ prototypes.

Other research programmes also flourished during the 1950s and 1960s, leading to licensable patents for a variety of broad purpose technologies such as the sea-water battery (US Patent No. 4,016,399). But perhaps NRE’s most ambitious cold war invention was the hydrofoil craft. Research began in 1948 with the goal of developing many small but fast anti-submarine vessels to patrol the Atlantic coast. On 24 September 1954, a photo of NRE’s first working (and no longer secret) hydrofoil made the cover of LIFE magazine.¹ A crown corporation, De Havilland Aircraft of Canada, was contracted for design studies and to build the final 200-ton prototype. The second generation HMCS Bras D’Or was put to sea trials in 1967. Other published accounts tell us that the Bras D’Or became the world’s fastest warship on 9 July 1969 (Boileau, 2004, pp 5–6). Then two years later, the Minister of National Defence announced a shift in policy from anti-submarine warfare to sovereignty protection (a focus on the Arctic). On 2 November 1971, the Minister informed Parliament of his decision to mothball the hydrofoil project (Boileau, 2004, p 82). Other work in hydronautics (naval architecture) would continue throughout the Cold War under NRE’s new name, Defence Research Establishment Atlantic (DREA, ca. 1985, p 2).

Dalhousie University’s Department of Oceanography, 1949–74

Dalhousie University was among three Canadian universities ambitious to start training oceanographers in the late 1940s (Mills, 1994). The Second World War had proven the science, and the Cold War was stimulating demand for the scientists (Mills, 1994, 2011; Hamblin, 2005). But funds were limited and politics were keen. In June 1949, the National Conference of Canadian Universities snubbed McGill University and recommended that the government support oceanography schools at both Dalhousie and the University of British Columbia (UBC) instead. Mills (1994) argues that UBC had already quietly secured federal support at that point and was well on its way to creating an ‘Institute of Oceanography’ later that summer (Mills, 1993). Meanwhile, Dalhousie was unable to make its case for financial support. Ron Hayes, Professor of Zoology, had taken the lead at Dal. He wrote to the Minister of Fisheries proposing a programme in biological oceanography, in line with his work on bacteriology (as microbiology was then known). The Deputy Minister wrote back advising that there was greater need in physical oceanography and that Dalhousie should align itself with the Joint Committee on Oceanography (JCO). The JCO included senior scientists from the Fisheries Research Board, the Royal Canadian Navy, and the National Research Council (later joined by the Hydrographic Service and the Defence Research Board). They had the political power to set Canada’s oceanography agenda and were interested in the physical conditions of the ocean. UBC ‘exploited the interest’ (Mills, 1994, p 3). It would be a full decade before Dalhousie secured the necessary political support to offer graduate studies in oceanography on the East Coast (Mills, 1994, p 256).

However, Dalhousie eventually found success in a hybrid approach to oceanography. A partnership was announced in the 25 April 1959 issue of the journal Nature (‘Institute of Oceanography, Dalhousie: Prof Ronald Hayes’, 1959). The JCO had made an appeal to the National Research Council, resulting in a grant of $90,000 to Dalhousie. The announcement proudly proclaimed: ‘All branches of marine science will come under investigation, and opportunities for work at sea will be provided by the Royal Canadian Navy, the Fisheries Research Board of Canada, and other agencies’ (‘Institute of Oceanography, Dalhousie: Prof Ronald Hayes’, 1959, p 1161). Hayes had pulled together faculty from the departments of biology, chemistry, geology, and physics. This interdisciplinary approach was normal for the field. But the way in which it was implemented at Dalhousie created political tensions: professors were accountable to their home departments and not to the Institute (Waite, 1994).

These tensions were not to be resolved by Hayes. He left Dalhousie in 1963 to chair the Fisheries Research Board. J. E. Blanchard became Acting Director for a year while Dalhousie wooed Gordon Riley away from Yale (Waite, 1994). It has been said that Riley was ‘the greatest biological oceanographer of his time’ (Department of Oceanography, 2011). He became Director of the Institute in 1964 and used his political acumen to secure departmental status.

It was the University’s new Life Sciences Centre that helped Riley cement² oceanography as a department (Waite, 1994). He chaired the building committee, while University President Henry Hicks lobbied for government support. The National Research Council offered $1 million for the facility’s hallmark ‘Aquatron’ (Waite, 1994, pp 307–10). The tank would draw its water from the Northwest Arm of Halifax Harbour, nearly a kilometre away, allowing for ‘work on the water column and on marine fish and mammals that [is] difficult to do elsewhere in one laboratory’ (Department of Oceanography, 2011, p 6). The Atlantic Development Board offered another $2 million for marine biology facilities. Federal and provincial loan financing ($15 million) soon followed. Construction began in 1969 and tenants started arriving in 1971. Since the initial building funds had been earmarked for oceanographic research, this included the new Department of Oceanography.

Upon completion of the Aquatron, the Dalhousie student newspaper would quote Dr Kenneth Boyd’s claim that it was ‘perhaps the best laboratory for biological oceanographic research in the world’ (Monaghan, 1974, p 1). One of the first research projects was on ‘various forms of sea plankton’ (Monaghan, 1974, p 1). Dalhousie oceanographers would go on to develop sensors to detect photosynthesis by phytoplankton in the ocean (Lewis and Smith, 1983) and to publish a breakthrough study in the journal Nature on the global decline in phytoplankton throughout the 20th century (Boyce et al, 2010). The study warns that phytoplankton are responsible for ‘roughly half the planetary primary production’ (Boyce et al, 2010, p 591) and their decline is evidence that ‘increasing ocean warming is contributing to a restructuring of marine ecosystems’ (Boyce et al, 2010, p 595).

The Bedford Institute of Oceanography, 1962–92

The Canadian Committee on Oceanography (formerly the Joint Committee for Oceanography), comprising Canada’s senior government and university ocean scientists, launched a five-year plan in the early 1960s. The Committee’s first priority was the construction of a government oceanography institute on the Bedford Basin of Halifax Harbour (van Steenburgh, 1962). This idea had been championed by Dr W.E. van Steenburgh, then Deputy Minister of Mines and Technical Surveys (a federal department). When announcing an initial $3 million to build the BIO, van Steenburgh’s Minister ‘stressed the importance of a better understanding of the oceans to science, defence, commerce, and development of the country’s resources’ (‘Canadian Institute of Oceanography’, 1959). To this list, van Steenburgh (1962) later added that the Institute would help Canada fulfil new international treaty obligations. The announcement of this ‘Bedford Institute’ was right on the heels of federal funding for Dalhousie University’s Oceanography Institute. While van Steenburgh encouraged cooperation between the two, he publicly urged that a university scientist should ‘remain free to tackle any problem’ (van Steenburgh, 1962, p 10, emphasis in original) based on its scientific merits. Meanwhile, BIO’s research programmes would be oriented to various government agendas.

This research mandate covered Atlantic and Arctic waters, where BIO would initially serve ‘customers’ in fisheries, navigation, maritime defence, natural resources, and weather forecasting (BIO, 1962–92, vol 1963, pp 2–4). The work was slated to include: ‘Physical and chemical oceanography, air/sea and air/ice/sea interactions, marine geophysics, marine geology, tides and currents, hydrographic charting, and, in support of all these, instrument research and development’ (BIO, 1962–92, vol 1965, p 5). The first scientists and staff began to arrive in July 1962: 17 employees of the Department of Mines and Technical Surveys (M&TS) and 14 employees of the Fisheries Research Board (FRB) (they were the FRB’s Atlantic Oceanography Group, relocated from St Andrew’s, NB). This expanded to 16 FRB and 124 M&TS employees within the first 12 months (BIO, 1962–92, vol 1962). The FRB employees retained their affiliation, setting a precedent where BIO was an umbrella facility composed of multiple government agencies. After its official opening in October 1963, scientists from the Institute’s founding agencies were joined by marine geologists from the Geological Survey of Canada (1964), secretariat staff of the International Commission for the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries (1965), marine microbiologists and chemists from Environment Canada (1972), and seabird researchers from the Canadian Wildlife Service (1976). At its height, nearly 700 employees were sharing the BIO facilities and research vessels. Employees of Defence Research Establishment Atlantic, the Nova Scotia Research Foundation (NSRF), and Dalhousie University were also welcome aboard the research vessels. Originally BIO had access to five ships owned by M&TS, plus the CCGS Labrador (which had passed from the Defence Research Board to the Coast Guard and was used by BIO until 1977), and the CNAV Sackville (which remained a naval command auxiliary vessel, in service of the FRB). Some MT&S ships were built specifically for BIO use, including the CSS Hudson which was the first non-American and nonmilitary vessel to use satellite navigation (Clarke, Heffler et al, 2002).

Decades of research aboard these ships helped to establish Canadian sovereignty over an expanding coastal zone. Prior to the Institute’s formation, a 1958 Laws of the Sea Conference had decided that mineral resources beneath any continental shelf should belong to the adjacent country (van Steenburgh, 1962). Then in 1977, Canada extended its fisheries jurisdiction to 200 nautical miles from shore (Nichols, 2002). Combined, these decisions dramatically expanded Canada’s territory. Canada’s Arctic claims were particularly contentious (Ørvik, 1982; Pigott, 2011). Although important work continued in the Atlantic, Arctic sovereignty became a critical driver of BIO research. Without question, maritime defence was the principal Arctic issue of the 1960s. BIO’s second annual report explained that ‘the whole ocean, from surface to bottom is or soon will be the region of potential submarine and antisubmarine operations’ (BIO, 1962–92, vol 1963, p 3). But by 1970, petroleum development became the more important Arctic sovereignty issue. The search for oil and gas deposits had intensified in both the Atlantic and the Arctic. BIO had conducted some preliminary work in the northern Beaufort Sea. Then, the Hudson ’70 voyage captured global attention. BIO’s Hudson was the first ship to circumnavigate the Americas (Nichols, 2002). While traversing the Northwest Passage, the crew conducted geological and geophysical work that ‘contributed to an awakening interest in the hydrocarbon potential of this region’ (Nichols, 2002, p 15). This meant that Canada’s northern oceanographic concerns were not limited to Soviet submarines.

In fact, throughout the Cold War, Canada used BIO as a vehicle for Canadian–Soviet cooperation. Although BIO’s closest international ties were with American institutions (such as the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution), exchanges with Russian institutions began in 1964. That year, BIO sent one of its two Arctic oceanographers, A. E. Collin, on a Canadian delegation to the USSR (and ‘the Baltic countries’) that discussed ‘problems of navigation in ice’ (BIO, 1962–92, vol 1964, p 3). Then in 1967, BIO hosted a delegation from the USSR Ministry of Fisheries and a visit by the Russian/Ukrainian science vessel, RN Lomonosov (BIO, 1962–92, vol 1967–68). Ghent (1981) describes how Canada worked for years to establish knowledge flows with the USSR in Arctic Science. She notes that two memoranda of understanding were signed in 1972, including plans for further cooperation in geophysics, oceanography, and ice research.

Although working towards Soviet alliances and actively partnering with the Americans, BIO also started monitoring the Arctic for a threat posed by both nuclear powers. A programme to track marine radioactivity began in 1965. Radioactive waste was being dumped in the ocean by American, British, and Russian authorities throughout the Cold War (Hamblin, 2002, 2008). This, along with the 1970 Arrow oil spill off Nova Scotia, began BIO’s longstanding environmental protection work (Nichols, 2002).

The partnership with Guildline Instruments Ltd. (of Smith’s Falls, ON) also led to the development of the variable-depth sensor package BATFISH (BIO, 1962–92, vol. 1969–70, p 125; Watkins, 1980, p 22). The control unit for BATFISH was developed in partnership with a Nova Scotian company, Hermes Electronics, and is also held at the Canadian Museum of Science and Technology.

During the 1970s, major breakthroughs were developed with or transferred to local industry. These included: a meteorological buoy with Hermes Electronics, an ocean-bottom seismometer with the Canadian Marconi Company, and salmon aquaculture techniques that spawned³ a billion-dollar industry (Sinclair et al, 2002). Throughout much of this time, John Brooke had led instrument development. He eventually became BIO’s ‘Industrial Liaison Officer’. He also sat on the Advisory Board for NSRF’s Centre for Ocean Technology (NSRF, 1946–95, vols 1976–81). Upon his retirement from government in the early 1980s, he founded the company Brooke Ocean Technologies, which became a major partner for the Institute. Together, BIO and Brooke Ocean developed technologies including a ‘Moving Vessel Profiler System’ that improved on BATFISH, and a wave-powered profiler called SeaHorse (mentioned in Chapter 1).

But BIO’s purpose here was to engage private sector resources in developing oceanographic tools, not necessarily to establish a local industry. Throughout the 1980s, additional partners/contractors outside of Nova Scotia were also involved in significant new technologies, including Huntec Ltd. of Toronto, ON (a deep-towed seismic system), Universal Systems Ltd. of Fredericton, NB (applications of the company’s CARIS marine geomatics software), and International Submarine Engineering Ltd. of Port Moody, BC (the DOLPHIN and ARCS underwater autonomous vehicles). BIO’s technology transfer was at a national and international scale, and it was only a means to achieving the institute’s various missions.

Characterization

Plot

This chapter would contain different stories if I had followed different plotlines. I could have chosen different junctures (Mills, 2010) – different points in time to begin and end my stories. I could have chosen to focus on different actors: writing short stories about a key person, technology, or business. And I certainly could have written a radically different story from the perspective of local peace or environmental activists.⁴ In preparing this chapter, I took care in assembling bits and pieces of story from disparate archival records and history books. I used the historiographic tools provided to me by my academic training and networks. I made choices based on my (research) interests. And of course, I missed some important things because of these choices (more on that, including the peace and environmental activists, in Chapter 8). But we must all make choices whenever we tell a history. And those choices are always situated in sociomaterial actor-networks.

All those who study innovation are de facto historians. We write stories of the past in the form of literature reviews, context descriptions, and so on. But we do not always notice the decisions we are making about where to begin, where to end, and how to structure our stories. It is too easy to accept the most powerful narrative devices provided to us by extant theory (see Chapter 2) or during our field work (see Chapter 3). It is easy to let zombie neoliberalism take hold of our storytelling (as discussed in this chapter). This is how the field of innovation studies has ended up with so many similar stories of past innovation. We have fit our stories to the same narrative patterns. We neglect, ignore, write off, or rewrite ‘abnormal’ characters and plotlines. Critical historiography can break these narrative patterns and help reveal dark innovation. And that has been the key point of the past three chapters.