In this paper, we observe an undergoing transformation in the qualification of the processes of emergence that we call ‘innovation’. First conceived in the industrial mode defined by Schumpeter within the consumer economy context, innovation has now acquired a more general meaning and has been transformed in the understanding of collective action. Against the backdrop of transformations in the industrial reality, the crisis of desire in consumer societies, and the impoverishment of the imaginary, ‘social innovation’ appears to be a new (...) form of imaginary institution of society in the definition that Cornelius Castoriadis gave to this expression. The semantic enrichment of the notion of innovation allows us to glimpse a new framework for the ethics of innovation, which needs to be interpreted from the perspective of the age of transitions. (shrink)