Successive modes of production adopt new ways of increasing social output meaning innovation of organisation and technology critical is the motor of economic and social progress requiring a positive interaction between social relations of production and social relations of reproduction. This chapter discusses democracy, planning and innovation: building a use-value economy. Baumol’s (The Cost Disease. Yale University Press, New Haven, 2012) challenge argues that labour intensive services are necessarily less productive than manufacturing and that public services (i.e. non-market use-values) are the least productive of all and should be privatised. Disputing Baumol who excludes quality for assessment of productivity, we argue that democratically organised services, (public, household, third-sector (3S) and not-for-profit public-private partnerships (PPPs), can be highly efficient. Their effectiveness in design may benefit from service users/customers engaged in design and innovation processes amplifying areas of productive consumption. We show this in relation of AI innovation in public services. Further we argue that democratic public services are less prone to cause alienation and fetishisation since providers and users are brought together. Additionally, democratising use-value design and provision builds wider democratic and accountable social governance arrangements replacing what Marx terms the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie i.e. market and money mediation. Broadening the realm of social learning and its exploitation in innovation reduces the production/reproduction relations and challenges some of the non-Marxist perspectives found in social reproduction theory (SRT) ensuring that the voice of race minorities and women is heard in the central halls of service (use-value) design and delivery. Exploring use-values, innovation and democracy suggests contrasts in social relations outside of capitalism, the subject of Chap. 8 . Here we explore innovation and the use of technology in non-market use-values.