Science-fiction and innovation management: where do we stand?

Résumé En

We investigate how science fiction constitutes an institution that frames the management of innovation. To do so, we do use three major publication databases to do a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) of academic articles dealing with relations between science fiction, innovation and management. We first proceed with keyword searches to identify the relevant papers. We then categorize these papers according to variables constructed from the most influential works of science fiction. We have two sorts of findings. Our first findings concern the gaps between science fiction and the academic literature on innovation and management. Science fiction is a market worth several billion dollars, and yet little work in the fields of innovation and management explores its mechanisms and impact. Our second findings concern science fiction as a ‘shaper’ of innovation. We show that although science fiction does not meet the definition of an institution according to institutional theory, it has the attributes of an institution and it plays the role of an institutional agent. This raises interesting new avenues of research for the study of institutional logics, and more generally of institutional theory.