ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the harnessing of particular narratives regarding the economics of innovation to justify the reorganization of academic biomedical research towards Translational Science and Medicine (TSM). Translational Science, Translational Medicine, Clinical Translation and Translational Research are all monikers used to represent a common set of overlapping concepts that coalesce around a central notion: to entirely redesign biomedical research in order to accelerate the process whereby publicly funded science is turned into applications and especially products. Thus, TSM must be understood in multiple ways: as ethos and newly formalized academic discipline, as well as a set of concrete objects. A panoply of approaches precedes TSM. However, history also has seen the formalization of multiple scientific and institutional approaches designed to refocus scientific research towards applications. Nevertheless, it is clear that TSM functions as a grand space of discourse-making about the nature of innovation.
