The sources of use knowledge: Towards integrating the dynamics of technology use and design in the articulation of societal challenges

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Abstract

This paper reviews three strands of the innovation literature that have presented innovation as a distributed process that combines knowledge of designers and users: user innovations, Science and Technology Studies (STS), and domestication research. These literatures have explored different aspects of the micro-processes through which use and design knowledge are locally embedded. This paper pulls together insights from the literatures, and identifies an important gap: the connections between the local embedding of use and design knowledge, and the meso dynamics of industrial and technological change. The paper then develops a number of integrating concepts and propositions for a framework to study the co-evolution of use and design in innovation processes. It also demonstrates that this framework is most valuable in researching how societal challenges become articulated over time in processes of technological change and innovation.

Highlights

► Reviews and integrates insights from the user innovation literature, STS and domestication research ► Identifies the sources of use knowledge in innovation processes ► Proposes an agenda to understand better the articulation of societal challenges in innovation processes

Introduction

Innovation systems and processes need to be able to respond to changes in their broader socio-economic environment. When technology becomes embedded in society, it both incorporates knowledge about societal issues, while at the same time it shapes the very nature and understanding of such issues [1], [2], [3], [4]. This paper revisits this basic insight to take stock of what we know about the underlying processes of aligning technological and socio-economic change. Our vantage point is that policy makers and innovators alike have become increasingly interested in particular challenges on the demand side of innovation [5]. Sustainable or eco-innovation is a recent example [6], where technological change is seen as a potential solution to the societal challenge of facilitating transitions towards more sustainable forms of energy production and use. This has a normative dimension: policy makers strive to channel technological change into directions deemed desirable. However, societal challenges also affect innovation processes more immediately, when they open up chances and threats for innovators in general. Demographic aging, for instance, bears a number of threats for social and health-care systems that can be addressed through new technical solutions. At the same time, it also provides a chance for knowledge-intensive economies to define and corner new markets by timely responses to associated changes in consumption patterns [7].

In this paper, we contend that addressing societal issues through technology is inherently linked to ideas and imaginations about technology use: If we want to foster more energy efficient patterns of mobility, what novel forms of using transport technology does this entail? If we want to promote healthy aging, what images of older technology users does this encompass [8]? For policy makers and innovators alike, it is thus important to comprehend the mechanisms through which a broad and often paradoxical understanding of societal challenges is articulated into more concrete ideas of technology users and use in technological change [9], [10], [11]. Such comprehension will enable them to address these challenges through informed interventions into the boundary zones or junctions [12] where knowledge about technology use is embedded with knowledge about technology design. This paper delves deeper into some of the fundamental conceptual issues surrounding such embedding processes.

Technological change and innovation are not one-off instances, but are processes that stretch over different phases, spaces and social worlds [3], [13]. Hence, the articulation of societal challenges in innovation has a diachronic dimension, where knowledge claims about such challenges evolve together with technology. In this paper, we strive to develop a conceptual framework for empirical research to address the diachronic dimension of the articulation of societal challenges in innovation. For this purpose, we do not present original empirical material, but the results of a comparative literature study of three hitherto just loosely connected literatures, which are pertinent in understanding the use side of innovation: The user innovation literature has focused on users as the actual source of innovation [14], [15]. Within Science and Technology Studies (STS), the semiotic tradition has explored how users and use are constructed and imagined along with technical objects [16], [17]. And, finally, domestication research has delved deeply into the issues at stake when new technical objects are embedded in the local practices of users [18], [19].

Our review demonstrates that the current understanding of the embedding of use and design knowledge in innovation has, thus far, remained partial and fragmented. The literatures stem from dispersed areas of innovation research; they partially focus on different aspects of users and use; they derive their insights from distinct empirical domains, and they follow dissimilar epistemological paths. At the same time, they reveal a considerable degree of overlap in their attempt to come to grips with the embedding of use and design knowledge. We use this to develop a conceptual framework that can be applied to follow empirically the articulation of societal issues in innovation processes over time.

The paper proceeds as follows: Section 2 briefly revisits classic insights from innovation studies about the interactions between the demand and supply side of innovation. Two long-standing challenges are identified, which then guide the exploration of the three literatures—the local embedding of use and design knowledge in technical objects, and the co-evolution of the related knowledge bases in innovation processes. The actual literature review investigates these challenges for each of the literatures separately (Sections 2.12.3) and sheds light on some of the methodological and epistemological differences between the literatures (Section 2.4). Section 3 pulls together the insights from the three literatures into a framework (Sections 3.13.3), and Section 4, finally, outlines how this framework can be used in further empirical research on the articulation of societal challenges in innovation.

Section snippets

Reviewing approaches to users and use in innovation

It is among the most basic tenets of innovation research that technology-push or demand-pull models cannot explain technological change adequately. Since its inception in the 1970s, the Neo-Schumpeterian evolutionary tradition of economics has therefore revolved around the idea that innovation is a process that responds to supply and demand side factors simultaneously [20], [21], [22], [23], [24]. Likewise, early contributions in Science and Technology Studies (STS) have carefully torn down

Reconciling Insights

In the previous section, three bodies of literature have been discussed that focus on the use and users of innovation. Each of these literatures has been prolific. The review can and should be read as a doorway to them, and it has attempted to bring out the conceptual foundations of each literature. For this reason, we have chosen to discuss seminal contributions in depth, and present each body as a relatively consistent set of empirical studies.8

Conclusion: toward understanding the articulation of societal challenges

This paper has started with the question of how challenges in the societal environment of innovation become articulated in processes of technological change. To address this question, we have reviewed three bodies of literature that focus on the use and user side of innovation. Most importantly, the review has identified a set of boundary zones in which the use and the design of new technology meet. Fig. 1 has mapped different sources of use knowledge in these zones. Furthermore, the review has

Dr. Alexander Peine holds a tenured position as Assistant Professor of Science, Technology and Innovation Studies (STIS) at Utrecht University. He was a Max Weber post-doctoral fellow at the European University Institute (Florence) from 2006 to 2007, and a Principal Investigator at the Center for Technology and Society of Berlin University of Technology from 2006 to 2008. He has a PhD in Sociology and Business Economics also from Berlin University of Technology and an MSc from Delft University

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    Dr. Alexander Peine holds a tenured position as Assistant Professor of Science, Technology and Innovation Studies (STIS) at Utrecht University. He was a Max Weber post-doctoral fellow at the European University Institute (Florence) from 2006 to 2007, and a Principal Investigator at the Center for Technology and Society of Berlin University of Technology from 2006 to 2008. He has a PhD in Sociology and Business Economics also from Berlin University of Technology and an MSc from Delft University of Technology (The Netherlands). His research in STIS focuses on technology consumption and its entanglement with the work of designers and engineers in innovation processes, and he has a particular and long-standing interest in innovation for older persons (“Gerontechnology”).

    Dr. Andrea Monika Herrmann holds a tenured position as Assistant Professor at the ‘Innovation Studies Group’ of Utrecht University. From 2010 to 2012, she also is a Marie Curie Research Fellow at the Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy of Columbia University. She was a postdoctoral research fellow at the Max-Planck-Institut für Gesellschaftsforschung (Cologne) from 2006 to 2008. She holds a PhD from the European University Institute (Florence) and an MSc from the London School of Economics (London). Her work includes various articles on institutional theory, corporate competitiveness, innovation management, entrepreneurship, and methodology, and a book (2008) entitled: One Political Economy, One Competitive Strategy? Oxford; Oxford University Press.

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