"The Future can only be Imagined" - Innovation in Farm Tourism from a Phenomenological Perspective

Abstract

This article relates to the fast growing research literature on innovation by adopting a phenomenological perspective of change and how change comes about. We visited nineteen farms in Norway in a project on farm-based tourism. Results show highly differentiated products but similar routes in transforming a farm no longer seen as economically viable, into a way of doing life and doing work that brings a complex of considerations together. The concept of imaginative horizons is used and seen as characteristic of the transformative process of turning the farm into a farm based tourist enterprise. The same transformation becomes a way of keeping the relationship and interdependence between the past and the present vivid and meaningful.