How does research create societal value? Although it seems intuitive that investing in science will drive technological and hence economic development, evidence of the efficacy of those investments is far more ambivalent about the causal link between academic research and social value creation. This presentation seeks to problematize the current innovation policy debate as missing important conceptual nuances about how valorisation processes could potentially function. The presentation takes as its starting point one domain, humanities research, where the tensions in these accounts are immediately evident. Drawing on three divergent theoretical frameworks, namely technology transfer, cultural value and public accountability, this paper seeks to move beyond normative techno-fetishistic accounts of research exploitation to address this problematic and provide conceptual insights as the basis for the articulation of a better perspective on the public value of humanities research in particular, but also the processes by which “publics” value research more generally.