Values in, for, and through Innovation: Exploring the Construction, Mobilization, and Establishment of Values in Rural and Peripheral Innovation

Innovation has increasingly become a societal matter (Rammert, 2018; Schot & Steinmüller, 2018), meaning that heterogeneous actors debate and struggle over what can be considered valuable and innovative in the first place. Innovativeness is therefore no longer self-evident but subject to societal valuation (Jeannerat, 2024). It is such a value-based understanding that is the starting point for the dissertation project, which explores the nexus of innovation and valuation from a micro-level perspective. Conceptually, the work draws on insights from creativity research (Stark, 2009; Hutter, 2015) as well as the emerging field of valuation studies (Coughlan, 2023; Angstmann, 2025).
The empirical focus lies on innovation processes and actors in rural and peripheral areas in Germany. The focus on non-core regions is motivated in two ways. First, core and urban areas are typically associated with the capacity to render novelty valuable, which positions rural and peripheral regions as receivers or passive residuals in wider spatial innovation dynamics (Grabher & Ibert, 2025). Yet broad empirical work on rural innovation questions this orthodox understanding, prompting questions on how rural and peripheral innovators render their initiatives and undertakings valuable. Second, rural and peripheral areas offer a compelling setting for a value-oriented inquiry of innovation processes more generally. Innovation here often unfolds outside confined R&D departments or research institutes. These settings frequently involve heterogeneous actors, making particularly visible how values are debated, negotiated, embraced or contested throughout innovation processes. 
Questions that guide the research include how struggles over values can become constructive drivers of rural innovation processes, how rural innovators mobilize value and recognition for their undertakings, and how rural materiality can become a starting point for innovative thinking when being revaluated. Methodologically, the project combines reconstructive innovation biographies (Butzin & Widmayer, 2016) with focus groups, semi-structured and problem-centered interviews, and local media analysis. This allows innovation valuation to be approached from different angles.The value-perspective on innovation to be developed in the frame of this qualification project is deemed fruitful when engaging with questions of transformativity. It sheds light on how new knowledge and ways of doing gain legitimacy and traction, and on how underlying values evolve. This makes it possible not only to understand how innovation becomes established, but also how new values might emerge through innovation.
The work is based on the concluded third-party funded project SOIR - Strong through Open Innovation Regions funded by the BMFTR. It is supervised by Prof. Dr. Suntje Schmidt and situated in the Applied Economic Geography department at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.