The Contrary Forces of Innovation: An Ethnography of Innovation in the Food Industry

327 Pages·2011·1.918 MB·English

by  Thomas Hoholm (auth.)

The Contrary Forces of Innovation

The Contrary Forces of
Innovation
An Ethnography of Innovation in
the Food Industry
Thomas Hoholm
BI Norwegian School of Management, Norway
© Thomas Hoholm 2011
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First published 2011 by
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ISBN 978-1-349-32898-7 ISBN 978-0-230-30208-2 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9780230302082
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10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11
This need to make, to create, to invent is, no doubt,
a fundamental human impulse. But to what end?
Paul Auster

Contents
List of Illustrations x
Acknowledgements xi
Part I
1 Understanding Innovation As Process 3
Innovation in the making: a case study 4
Situating the study 7
Innovation management and process 10
The industrial network approach 14
Actor- network theory and the study of emergence 21
Investigating process and controversy 33
The structure of the book 36
2 Constructing Ethnography 38
Digging into potential cases 45
Doing organisational ethnography 47
Gathering materials 47
Reorganising materials: writing ethnography 50
Part II
3 Introducing the Case Study 57
Combining fish, fermentation and proteins 58
The idea of fermenting fish 58
Starting product development 59
Market research and technological development 61
Including pre- rigor salmon 63
Shift from Umi No Kami to Salma 64
Scaling up production 65
Market testing: presenting the product 66
Market testing: selling Salma Cured 67
Market testing: selling fresh 69
Summing up the case study 70
Blue- green innovation and Tine’s strategy 71
Agricultural R&D and the appeal of fish 71
vii
viii Contents
Blue- green innovation 74
Tine’s efforts to industrialise fish 77
The biomarine projects 84
Restructuring Tine Biomarin 87
4 Fermenting Fish: Innovation in Practice 94
Idea and invention: recombining elements 95
Neptun: research and technology development 99
Collaboration in the laboratory 99
Funding the Neptun project 101
Testing different types of fish 106
Umi No Kami: from science to product development 109
Filing and marketing a patent application 109
Starting the Umi No Kami project 115
Organising the project 117
Recombining materials and stabilising fatty acids 121
Recruiting and controlling micro-o rganisms 127
Summing up: organising micro- actors 133
Early market research and conceptualisation 135
Types of customers and quality/price 140
Management preconditions and initial intentions 143
International study tour 144
Domestic market research 146
Summing up market opportunities 148
Summing up identity negotiations 149
Reorganising the project and scaling up production 151
The ‘coup’ of Umi No Kami 155
The market system for fish 163
The cold fish technology and pre-r igor processing 169
Bremnes Seashore’s point of view 172
Partnering: negotiating contracts and practice 174
Scaling up production 181
The intervention of micro-o rganisms 185
Adjusting production practice 187
Looking for users 193
Making the concept: Salma 193
Looking for users: the marketing tour 198
Catering for Asia 204
A market test for salmon salami in Germany 212
Fish salami unmade 215
Contents ix
Part III
5 An Analytic Scheme of Innovation Processes 221
Staging of innovation processes 224
Mobilising actor- networks 225
Knowledge exploration 226
Interaction and confrontation of sub-p rocesses 227
A network of interconnected processes 230
6 The Contrary Forces of Innovation 232
Realising and stabilising innovations 235
Mobilising and committing to uncertain outcomes 242
Translation and path creation 243
Mobilisation in the face of exploration 248
Exploring knowledge and generating complexity 258
Punctuated learning 259
Exploration as divergent process 262
Interacting and mutual translation of interests 270
Interacting with users 271
Mutual translation of interests 278
7 Conclusion 286
Innovation: processes, controversies and networks 287
Mobilising actor- networks 289
Exploring knowledge 290
Network of interconnected processes 292
Innovation process research 294
Afterword 296
Notes 298
References 305
Index 313