Concerned innovation: The ebb and flow between market and society

This paper examines concerned market innovations i.e. new market configurations which integrate non-economic values and collective concerns. We focus on a specific example of concerned market innovation: the evolution over a ten-year period of a cell phone take-back scheme in a single European country. Adopting a practical constructivist perspective, we note that in the case of concerned market innovation, market configurations are shaped by non-economic values and collective concerns and that, in turn, non-economic values and collective concerns are shaped by market configurations. The analysis of market practices integrating, and at the same time, performing values and concerns, leads us to the conceptualization of a theoretical model which shows that one of the difficulties of realizing concerned market innovations resides in the distinction between market and society.