Temporal grammars of novelty: How carbon removal entrepreneurs frame new technologies

Abstract Research Summary This paper assesses the ways in which carbon dioxide removal ventures frame their work. Drawing on George Herbert Mead's philosophy of the present, it conceptualizes temporal grammars of novelty as a framing strategy that involves connecting two points in time, namely present and future, to elaborate novelty. Dictionary, dependency parsing, and large language model approaches trace the use of temporal grammars of novelty across the websites of carbon removal companies in the market, and connect this to venture sales volumes. Analyses show that ventures deploying newer technologies and using temporal grammars of novelty have higher sales. In contrast, explicitly causal language does not prove beneficial. This paper addresses a fundamental problem in conceptualizing novelty by arguing that it is referential without being causal, and shows this with reference to the framing strategies deployed by environmental entrepreneurs. Managerial Summary Carbon removal entrepreneurs must convince buyers that novel, often unproven technologies are credible. This paper shows that how they talk about time matters. Analyzing website language and sales across carbon removal ventures, it finds that firms using more speculative technologies sell more when they link present action to future possibility: what they are designing, building, or deploying now, and what this will make possible later, at scale. By contrast, causal language—detailed claims about why or how specific features will produce outcomes—is not helpful and is negatively associated with sales. When framing novelty, pairing present action with future promise is more credible than over‐specified causal certainty.