ABSTRACT
I was invited to give a keynote speech at an academic conference on innovation at a university in Scandinavia. A variety of academics, business people, representatives of local and national government attended and participated in two and a half days of interesting discussion in the five thematic tracks in the conference. There were a large number of papers presented and often detailed discussion followed, which seemed to me to set out two broad narratives about change and innovation, which are interconnected, one could even say interdependent, but through a relationship of negation. I will argue below that it would be impossible to understand innovation and change without taking both views into account, but at the same time it seems to me that one narrative threatens to cover over the other one completely.
