| Abstract: | There is a pressing need better to understand the relative merits of emerging ideas and their contexts of generation. However, it is important to point out that the enterprise is needlessly disadvantaged if we unthinkingly adopt certain implicit assumptions about the nature of ideas. This short paper aims to clarify the consequences of our reliance upon such assumptions. It sets out to do this by positing three broadly differing perspectives on the nature of ‘ideas’: 1) romantic, 2) modified romanticism and 3) constitutive. The relative merits of these perspectives are then considered through reflections on the practical experience of generating and communicating new ideas in social science research. The paper concludes that social scientists need to embrace a form of constitutive marketing of ideas. |
