Towards a Typology of Innovation Regimes: Horizontal, Vertical, Schumpeterian, and Al-Shāfiʿī’s Epistemic: Beyond the Dominant Paradigm of Islamic Finance
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Abderrazak Said Belabes*
This article offers a critical reinterpretation of contemporary innovation theories, breaking with unidimensional approaches centered on Schumpeterian creative destruction. It develops an original analytical typology based on four innovation regimes: horizontal, vertical, Schumpeterian, and epistemic, drawing on the epistemology of al-Shāfiʿī. Horizontal innovation relies on a logic of diffusion of uses and stabilization of digital ecosystems, characterized by structured incrementalism and strong integration of user interfaces. Vertical innovation refers to a logic of sovereignty and power, where technology becomes a geostrategic decision-making infrastructure closely linked to state apparatuses and security concerns. Schumpeterian innovation corresponds to a disruptive dynamic based on creative destruction, but its contemporary limitations stem from the production of systemic instabilities. Finally, epistemic innovation is mobilized through al-Shāfiʿī’s contribution as a normative architecture for validating knowledge, based on methodological coherence and the regulation of conditions for truth production. This dimension introduces an analytical opposition between the ontology of conflict associated with Peter Thiel and Alex Karp, where innovation is conceived as asymmetric competition and the production of technological monopolies, and an ontology of epistemic stability centered on the validation, coherence, and pacification of knowledge. The article thus shows that innovation is not a homogeneous process, but a field structured by competing regimes of rationality. This typology allows for a reconfiguration of the measurement and governance of innovation, particularly in Muslim-majority economies, by integrating institutional, geostrategic, and epistemic criteria, beyond the dominant paradigm of Islamic finance, where innovation is conflated with market validation in global finance.
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