Reflexive expectations in innovation financing: An analysis of venture capital as a mode of valuation

Abstract

Social studies of expectations are premised on the notion that the future is brought into the present, and thereby expectations about the future come to shape our actions, decisions, and practices in ways that performatively bring about the imagined future. In this article, I examine how social actors themselves understand, construct, and deploy future expectations in innovation financing, focusing specifically on the venture capital industry financing of the life sciences sector. I do so to analyse how these reflexive efforts configure the valuation and investment decisions of these social actors and others. I build on analytical perspectives in STS and adjacent fields such as organization studies and economic sociology that analyse the role of expectations – manifested as stories, narratives, and accounts – in social action. To do so, I unpack how reflexivity comes to configure valuation and investment decisions, and the goals (e.g. exits) they rationalize.