This article draws on fieldwork with innovation consultants in the USA to argue that neoliberal assumptions about how large‐scale markets should be organised to maximise their efficiency now inform assumptions about how small‐scale business firms should be organised to maximise their innovative potential. A key mediating concept between macro‐level neoliberal theories and micro‐level innovation strategies is ‘free information flow’. This concept emerged in the mid‐20th century in the context of military‐industrial and engineering efforts to develop a mathematical theory of communication. Because this concept does not align with the embodied and meaning‐making nature of human employees, attempts to translate macro‐level neoliberal theories to micro‐level business innovation strategies have run into difficulties. These difficulties expose a problem that is intrinsic to neoliberal theories themselves. On the one hand, neoliberal theories emphasise the importance of each economic player’s context‐specific knowledge for an efficient economic order. On the other hand, they rely on a notion of context that is inflected by a pre‐determined goal, i.e. maximising economic efficiency, in relation to which people become epiphenomenal. This notion has very little to do with the lived reality of context as an emergent and indeterminate outcome of people’s everyday activities and interactions.

中文翻译：

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自由信息流：宏观新自由主义理论中的问题和矛盾及其对微观商业创新策略的转化

本文利用与美国创新顾问的实地考察来论证，关于应如何组织大型市场以最大化其效率的新自由主义假设现在为有关应如何组织小型商业公司以最大化其创新潜力的假设提供了假设。宏观新自由主义理论与微观创新战略之间的关键中介概念是“自由信息流”。这个概念出现在20世纪中叶，是在军事工业和工程学的背景下发展通信数学理论的。由于该概念与员工的具体体现和创造意义不符，因此将宏观新自由主义理论转化为微观企业创新策略的尝试遇到了困难。这些困难暴露出新自由主义理论本身固有的问题。一方面，新自由主义理论强调了每个经济参与者的特定情境知识对于有效的经济秩序的重要性。另一方面，他们依赖于预先确定的目标所影响的上下文概念，即最大化经济效率，从而使人们成为现象。这种概念与作为人的日常活动和互动的新兴且不确定的结果的现实生活上下文关系不大。他们依赖于预先确定的目标所影响的背景概念，即最大化经济效率，与此相关的人们成为了现象。这种概念与作为人的日常活动和互动的新兴且不确定的结果的现实生活上下文关系不大。他们依赖于预先确定的目标所影响的背景概念，即最大化经济效率，与此相关的人们成为了现象。这种概念与作为人的日常活动和互动的新兴且不确定的结果的现实生活上下文关系不大。