An Analytic Scheme of Innovation Processes

Abstract

Given that my research questions are ‘how questions’ — how do innovation processes evolve? — Chapter 4 has basically answered the main question. It is a relatively detailed description, based partly on real time and partly on historical accounts of an innovation process. It reveals many of the uncertainties and contingencies of innovation processes that, in most academics’ and practitioners’ accounts of innovation, are black-boxed by lack of real-time observation, oblivion and post-hoc ration-alisation. However, we still need to attempt to clarify what we could learn from this. By taking the case study observations and combining them with process-based analytical and methodological thinking, I will do two things. In this chapter, I will outline an analytic scheme (or a ‘conceptual model’) for studying and analysing (industrial) innovation processes that seem better suited for investigating the practice of industrial innovation that can be found in the established repertoire of actor-network theory, as well as in some recent contributions to innovation management. The framework I suggest here did not come before the fieldwork; rather, it is an outcome of the combination of process-based theory and my observations in the field, of recording and trying to discriminate between what kind of activities and ‘sub-processes’ are happening in practice, and pairing that with the logic of a relationalist and process view (Latour, 1987; Hernes, 2007).