Knowledge in Science and Innovation: A Review of Three Discourses on the Institutional and Cognitive Foundations of Knowledge Production

Modern society is said to be a knowledge society. Yet the academic discourse on the topics of learning and knowledge production is fragmented. In order to build bridges between different traditions, we review three discursive formations on contemporary knowledge production in science and innovation: the social shaping of science (SSS) discourse, the knowledge in innovation (KNOWINN) discourse and the analogy in science (ANALOG) discourse. We argue that the three discourses should be seen as complementary; and that a more comprehensive approach to the study of knowledge production in contemporary society can be developed by combining them. We illustrate this with an empirical example from the field of biotechnological science and innovation, and end the paper with a few proposals for fruitful ways of combining and juxtaposing the perspectives developed within the three discourses.