AUTHOR=Webster Andrew TITLE=Accelerating Innovation: Complexity, Regulation, and Temporality JOURNAL=Frontiers in Sociology VOLUME=4 YEAR=2019 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/sociology/articles/10.3389/fsoc.2019.00013 DOI=10.3389/fsoc.2019.00013 ISSN=2297-7775 ABSTRACT=
This Perspective paper explores recent moves seen in many countries toward accelerating the speed at which biomedical innovation can be delivered to the clinic. It discusses the drivers behind this and the rationale for it, illustrating this briefly in the field of regenerative medicine. It argues that the process reconfigures present/future relations, especially in terms of the relationship between different forms of evidence and risk calculations. The regulatory/innovation relationship is, as a result, being rewritten. Paradoxically, the moves toward acceleration are less to do with the arrival of a more streamlined evaluation system that selects for scientifically robust technologies ready for “the market.” In contrast, it reflects the growing complexity of innovation itself: whereas Latour (