Olof Hallonsten Libri

The book critiques the prevailing notion that innovation is universally beneficial, arguing instead that it can lead to negative consequences when driven by superficial motives. It highlights how policies can misguide innovation efforts, leading organizations to prioritize image over genuine improvement in technologies, services, and products. By labeling innovation as a buzzword and a political panacea, the author suggests that this trend ultimately undermines the true purpose of innovation, making it less effective and meaningful.

This book analyses the emergence of a transformed Big Science in Europe and the United States, using both historical and sociological perspectives. It shows how technology-intensive natural sciences grew to a prominent position in Western societies during the post-World War II era, and how their development cohered with both technological and social developments. At the helm of post-war science are large-scale projects, primarily in physics, which receive substantial funds from the public purse. Big Science Transformed shows how these projects, popularly called 'Big Science', have become symbols of progress. It analyses changes to the political and sociological frameworks surrounding publicly-funding science, and their impact on a number of new accelerator and reactor-based facilities that have come to prominence in materials science and the life sciences. Interdisciplinary in scope, this book will be of great interest to historians, sociologists and philosophers of science.