Abstract
<jats:p>This book analyzes the emergence of the so-called “evangelists of innovation” as key agents in the ideological, territorial, and symbolic production of contemporary capitalism. It investigates how concepts such as innovation, entrepreneurship, disruption, creative city, creative class, ecosystem, startup, hub, technology park, and innovation district have come to organize public policies, urban strategies, business agendas, university reforms, and institutional narratives. Through a critical, narrative, and interdisciplinary review, the book brings together urbanism, economic geography, urban sociology, political economy of innovation, organizational studies, and critique of ideology to examine how complex theories are appropriated, simplified, and transformed into slogans, metrics, territorial brands, and planning models. Taking Sharon Zukin’s work on the innovation complex as a central reference, the book discusses the relationship between land, labor, culture, capital, technology, and urban imagination. Across its chapters, it examines authors, institutions, myths, rituals, and pedagogies of the new economy, including the garage myth, the café myth, the “if you build it, they will come” myth, motivational phrases in innovation environments, and the visual construction of technological landscapes. The book also analyzes four paradigmatic territories of innovation — Silicon Valley, 22@ Barcelona, China, and Brazil — in order to discuss the limits of importing models, especially in the Global South. The book ultimately contrasts innovation as slogan with mission-oriented innovation, arguing that innovation only becomes development when it is articulated with public policy, productive capacity, technological sovereignty, strategic financing, social justice, and collective return. It is therefore a critical contribution to debates on technology parks, innovation districts, the knowledge economy, urban development, and the future of innovation policies in unequal territories.</jats:p>