Commentary on “The role of innovation in driving the economy: Lessons from the global financial crisis”

This commentary reacts to an article by Hausman and Johnston advocating innovation and entrepreneurship as keys to solving the current global financial crisis published in this special issue. The commentary is a valuable resonance board for my own ideas that, in some respects, deviate from those of the authors. I start from a partially different paradigm than the authors, as my theoretical platform is a new science of marketing and service that emerged during the 2000s. I find many of the suggestions logical and thoughtful, but primarily academic and US-centric. Will they work in practice, and especially on a global scale? I think the suggested solutions will work under certain conditions, but the world is imperfect and the necessary conditions are often absent. For example, the article shows confidence in the ability of governments to regulate and control and of research to contribute with more advanced metrics. Here I have doubts. I also find economic and management disciplines require new aspects for proposed solutions to work. Among these new aspects are the lack of genuine corporate social responsibility, growing corruption and crime, and the role of financial leaders whose behavior opened a new research field called “corporate psychopathy.”