Echoing a Schumpeterian formulation, innovations and disasters are intertwined phenomena. Reporting on this connection, this contribution seeks to go beyond both naturalist conceptions of innovation (and disaster) and their constructivist critics. While naturalist approaches conceive of innovations (and of disasters) as external realities that can be delineated (e.g., “systems”) and represented by numbers (e.g., “indicators”), constructivist approaches center on symbolic uses of both concepts and how these matter to social worlds. From the latter angle, the connection of innovation and disaster is viewed with skepticism: Attracting and multiplying media attention, disasters may be put to symbolic uses and thereby act as accomplices of innovation. Taking this case as a point of departure, the contribution sets out to explore further varieties of the innovation/disaster nexus, detailing strengths and weaknesses that emerge along the naturalist/constructivist dichotomy. As a model for transcending this dichotomy, it refers to the “laboratory studies” approach. Just as this approach has established itself against both naturalist and constructivist accounts in the field of science studies, recent work has considerably enriched research on innovation and disaster. This work is particularly instructive on the role of modern organizations. Although referred to as epitomizing innovation in dealing with disasters, they have often remained opaque. Drawing on the analogy to science studies, this black box is now ready for empirical analysis in terms of experimental practices.