This paper argues that the value creating substance of what is presented, funded and celebrated as innovation might be better understood as collective experimentation. Prompted by empirical research into New Zealand’s biological economies, the need for a reinvigorated rationale for social investment in economic growth, and a critique of the consolations of innovation in New Zealand’s science funding system, the paper was developed as the basis for an ultimately unsuccessful funding application. The paper explores the case that ‘experimentation’ in general, and collective experimentation in particular, are pivotal sources of new value creation; and thus offer objects of intervention for stimulating territorially framed economic development. The paper aims to contribute to revitalising an economic development emptied of much of its meaning, potential, and social value by neoliberal policy frames, and to offer ways forward that complement the visions and practices of counter-economy projects.