Innovation, Between Science and Science Fiction

Thomas Michaud holds a PhD in Management Science and an MBA in Management. He is interested in the role of science fiction in the processes of innovation.

• Foreword ixIntroduction xviiChapter 1 The Growth of the Imagination in Industrial Societies 11.1 A short history of science fiction 11.1.1 From Frankenstein to The Island of Doctor Moreau 11.1.2 Jules Verne, the founding father of science fiction 31.1.3 Albert Robida, a visionary in the shadow of Jules Verne 61.1.4 Hugo Gernsback, from fictional invention to innovation 81.1.5 Hard science fiction 101.1.6 The cyberpunk movement 121.1.7 The biopunk movement 161.1.8 A map of utopic technologies 181.2 The imagination, a cognitive barrier useful for innovation 201.3 The organizations’ use of science fiction 211.3.1 Design fiction and the popularization of technological imagination 211.3.2 Science fiction prototyping, a method to innovate 241.3.3 Science fiction and the identity of engineering students 271.3.4 The filter-philter theory 281.3.5 Institutional science fiction 291.3.6 Future Visions: Microsoft’s science fiction 331.3.7 China’s interest in science fiction and innovation 441.3.8 Forecasting and institutional science fiction 471.4 The psychology of organizations and science fiction 511.4.1 Normal, subversive or pathological imagination 511.4.2 Stimulating creativity with the imagination 541.4.3 Psychiatry and science fiction 561.4.4 Freudo-Lacanianism and science fiction 571.5 Should we organize a patenting system for utopic technologies? 59Chapter 2 Technological Ideologies and Utopias 672.1 The space industry and technological utopias 682.1.1 Imagining the human colonization of Mars 682.1.2 Terraforming Mars, a great project that remains fiction 772.1.3 The colonization of the universe, the future of humankind? 792.1.4 Space imagination in Lucien Boia and the ESA’s ITSF report 812.2 Transhumanism and science fiction 842.3 Science fiction and nanotechnologies 902.4 Accelerationism for a critical use of science fiction 952.5 From technological fiction to innovation 962.6 Imagining futures, at risk of the Cassandra syndrome 104Chapter 3 Science, the Imagination and Innovation 1093.1 The serious global dangers tackled by science fiction 1093.2 The great steps in the history of technologies since the end of the 19th Century 1163.3 Economic cycles and science fiction 1213.4 Theories on innovation and theories on the imagination 1243.4.1 Performative imagination and the creation of cyberspace 1333.4.2 From science fiction to techno-scientific innovations: virtual reality headsets 1343.4.3 The imagination before, together with and after science 1353.4.4 The hypothesis of a basic imagination at the root of science 1363.4.5 From the prophetic unconscious to the technological imagination 1373.4.6 Historical dynamics and technological utopianism 138Conclusion 141Bibliography 149Index 169