Industrial Ecology and Spaces of Innovation

Industrial Consumption and Innovation

Jeremy Howells

Abstract

This paper is exploratory in nature. It seeks to analyse the process of consumption by firms and how this influences innovation. The paper starts with a general review of current literature on the subject of consumption and innovation and how the consumption process may be seen to articulate and frame the dynamics of innovation. The analysis then focuses on consumption by the firm. It reviews existing views of firm demand and use as it relates to innovation, before exploring a more holistic notion of consumption and what this implies for studies of innovation and the firm. The role of the firm as a consumer of new goods and services is therefore emphasised here, as well as how firms seek to combine the consumption of goods and services in this process, and on the interactions between firms as consumers and producers. The paper concludes by considering wider research questions in relation to this neglected research field.

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