Which role for social sciences in front of the growing stronghold of the intensive innovation regime?
In a few decades innovation has become a slogan that is now predominant in both market and non-market spheres. In the same time, what can be termed as an intensive innovation regime has been thriving and tends now to prevail. The aim of this article is to unveil the conditions of development of such a regime, the limits it meets and the resistance it provokes ; finally it considers the possible role of social sciences in this dynamics. In the first part, we show that intensive innovation involves a constantly renewed singularization of human and non human beings, and that it tends to trigger at the same time the mobilization and participation of all those who are concerned by innovations. In the second part, after having introduced the notion of a site of problematization and having underlined the diversity of strategies that are deployed in such sites, we suggest that intensive singularization is not the only possible way for shaping innovation. This article proposes as a conclusion that social science researchers, by thoughtfully choosing the sites they intend to interfere with, seek to contribute to the emergence and the development of other regimes of innovation.