Table Of ContentBeyond Innovation
DOI: 10.1057/9781137547125.0001
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DOI: 10.1057/9781137547125.0001
Beyond Innovation:
Technology, Institution
and Change as
Categories for
Social Analysis
Thomas Kaiserfeld
Lund University, Sweden
DOI: 10.1057/9781137547125.0001
© Thomas Kaiserfeld 2015
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2015 978-1-137-54710-1
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this
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Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication
may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
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in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published 2015 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN
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ISBN: 978-1-137-54712-5 PDF
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www.palgrave.com/pivot
DOI: 10.1057/9781137547125
Contents
Preface vi
1 Innovation Monomania 1
2 Technology, Institution and Change 11
3 Market Institutions 27
4 Evolutionary Economics 37
5 Performativity 41
6 Knowledge 47
7 Agency 57
8 Clusters, Systems and Blocks 67
9 Resistance to Change 77
10 Commons 88
11 Technological Determinism 93
12 Modernity and Its Critics 102
13 Postmodernity 111
14 Hybridity and Technology Transfer 119
15 Conclusions 128
Bibliography 135
Index 159
DOI: 10.1057/9781137547125.0001 v
Preface
The background for this book is the increasing specializa-
tion of scholarly investigations of technological and insti-
tutional change. Although many studies of this particularly
dynamic area are interdisciplinary, drawing on philosophy,
history, sociology, economics and so on for methods,
analytical frameworks and other necessary prerequisites,
certain aspects have come to dominate over others. For
instance, much of the research on technical change deals
with innovation in firms and how to support it. The
purpose of this book is to counterweigh this dominating
firm-centric research trend by broadening our thinking
about technological and institutional change. It is done
by a multidisciplinary review of the most common ideas
about the dynamics between technology and institutions.
This book thus balances between being, on one hand, an
introduction for students interested in different views and
perspectives on technological and institutional change
without paying attention to borders between different
academic disciplines and, on the other, an instrument for
cross-fertilization between different strands of thought
and modes of analyses.
The ideas behind this text evolved in an interdisciplinary
setting, the Sector Committee of Technology, Institution
and Change, set up by the Swedish research foundation
Riksbankens Jubileumsfond. The purpose of this group
has been to discuss and initiate social and humanities
research in the intersection between technical applications
or political usages and economy, democracy and ethics.
The underlying assumption is that elusive technological
vi DOI: 10.1057/9781137547125.0002
Preface vii
change in complex institutional environments indicates worthwhile
research problems as well as research opportunities. There is simply a
demand for updated knowledge about different social processes leading
to institutional and technological dynamics.
One important strategy to achieve this is to review and bring together
existing results from a variety of disciplines and research fields and this
is what this book sets out to do. In addition, there is also a demand
for a broader, critical and public discussion about which technologies
to develop, by what means and with what ends. Insights from different
experiences are necessary to develop this theme in order to pursue a
democratic discourse. This book is thus written with the assumption
that ideas materialized in texts actually can make a difference.
I want to express my appreciation, not only to Riksbankens
Jubileumsfond, which set up the Sector Committee of Technology,
Institution and Change making this endeavour possible, but also to the
individual members of the committee who have all whole heartedly
supported my attempts to bring the many different ideas and concepts
together in one short book. Göran Blomqvist, managing director at
Riksbankens Jubileumsfond, Mats G. Hansson, biomedical ethics at
Uppsala University, Kristina Höök, human–machine interaction at KTH
Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Ericka Johnson, technology
and social change at Linköping University, Fredrik Lundmark, research
manager at Riksbankens Jubileumsfond, Cecilia Magnusson-Sjöberg,
cyber law at Stockholm University, Christian Munthe, practical philoso-
phy at University of Gothenburg, Lars J. Nilsson, environmental and
energy systems studies at Lund University, Urban Strandberg, political
science at University of Gothenburg, Jane Summerton, technology and
social change at Linköping University and Nina Wormbs, history of
technology at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, have all
commented on earlier versions of this text. Thank you for your patience!
I have also received many constructive and helpful comments from
the seminar group in the Department of History of Science and Ideas
at Uppsala University. In addition, anonymous reviewers have supplied
very valuable comments improving the text considerably. I am alone
responsible for all remaining shortcomings and errors.
DOI: 10.1057/9781137547125.0002
1
Innovation Monomania
Abstract:Innovation has become the buzzword in a number
of policy areas including research policy, economic policy
and environmental policy. In the struggle against economic
stagnation, innovation policies, sometimes in alliance with the
academic field of innovation studies, promote dreams about
institutions and technologies in which change can never be
turned into nightmares. The ambition of this book is, however,
to point to a number of alternative models and theories within
the social sciences that describe or explain dynamics between
institutions and technologies. The purpose is to demonstrate
the rich multitude of ideas about technology, institution and
change beyond innovation in the context of liberal markets.
Keywords: innovation; innovation paradigm; innovation
society; innovation studies
Kaiserfeld, Thomas. Beyond Innovation: Technology,
Institution and Change as Categories for Social
Analysis. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015.
doi:10.1057/9781137547125.0003.
DOI: 10.1057/9781137547125.0003
Beyond Innovation
Today’s Western society is obsessed with change and more specifically
technological change. Innovation has become the buzzword in a number
of policy areas including research policy, economic policy and environ-
mental policy.1 There does not seem to be a single challenge to humanity
that cannot be remedied by some technological innovation including
more drastic methods such as geoengineering. This trust in technology
is often enough combined with an equally strong trust in economic
institutions such as liberal markets, an ideal type where suppliers of
identical products compete for consumers with a minimum of regula-
tions to govern behaviour. Definitions of innovation accordingly include
notions of some sort of check like a demand for success in one way or
another. A typical definition thus frames innovation as “ideas success-
fullyy applied in organizational outcomes and processes.”2 Consequently,
considerable amounts of resources are funnelled into the development of
different technologies or knowledge that is assumed to have a potential
for commercialization.3 For instance, the European Union framework
programme for research and innovation running from 2014 to 2020 and
named Horizon 2020 includes an initiative called Innovation Union. This
is a “strategy to create an innovation-friendly environment that makes it
easier for great ideas to be turned into products and services that will
bring our economy growth and jobs.”4
Innovation Union is a very representative symbol of the presently
dominant view on technology, institution and change. With the right
investments and the right strategy to create “an innovation-friendly
environment”, commercial success stories are supposed to follow to
everyone’s advantage. Such ideas rest on basic propositions of economic
growth theory, “that in order to sustain a positive growth rate of output
per capita in the long run, there must be continual advances in tech-
nological knowledge in the form of new goods, new markets, or new
processes.”5 Important also are Joseph Schumpeter’s notions of quality-
improving innovations, as the engine of capitalist growth with entrepre-
neurs driven by a strong will as the cornerstone. Since new innovations
destroy the results of earlier ones, making them obsolete, an important
result is so-called creative destruction.6 In the context of innovation,
technological development is measured in commercial value, institu-
tions according to how much they support the creation of new innova-
tions, and, finally, change is always and in general beneficial. It is hardly
surprising that innovation studies have thrived as an academic discipline
in the social sciences and at business schools during the past decades.
DOI: 10.1057/9781137547125.0003
