This article aims to include autoethnography as a method for understanding and actively working with the researcher as a co-creator in interactive research for social and societal change. Participatory action research is a methodological approach to social change (Brydon-Miller m fl., 2003). It is an approach with unspoken autoethnographic claims that researchers should make the world better for vulnerable groups in society. The autoethnographic approach is understood in the article as a systematic analysis of personal experience to understand cultural experience (Ellis, 2004), both process and product (Ellis m fl, 2011). The unspoken claims are presented in the article through my experiences from being part of a research environment for participatory action research characterized by an extensive research project focused on innovation and growth in the media field. I, therefore, give examples such as epiphanies, self-reported phenomena of transformative experiences, as intense situations and effects that remain. Through my personal story, an ever-present tension in academic culture related to “social change” and “innovation for growth” emerges as opposites. This puts a vague and dissatisfied feeling into words that explain a lot in participatory action research as the approach is used for innovation and growth. For autoethnography to be fully understood and actively worked within and for interactive research, this perspective needs to be included in the research design of interactive research for social and societal change. The retrospective analytic approach I test here can only offer well-founded argumentation to highlight the value of trying this perspective. Autoethnography makes it possible to show how the tensions in academia and economics are valuable in illuminating cultural processes. It emphasizes the importance of autoethnographic elements to shed particular light on methodological issues by assuming and acknowledging the researchers' active role in participatory action research, where subjective norms and ideas are included in the research approach and thus need to be articulated.