Introduction
Our resilience is now so inextricably linked to the technologies we employ that our collective ignorance over these relationships is somewhat staggering. How do we encourage development and use of technologies that are both economically valuable and culturally appropriate for New Zealand? With pressing needs to address climate change and energy issues, how do we encourage the development and uptake of 'green' technologies that deliver positive economic, environmental and social outcomes? What innovations are compatible with Maori culture, the indigenous culture of Aotearoa/New Zealand?
Our approach is premised on a disjuncture between technology development and wider socio-economic adoption. NZ has a reputation for being an innovation leader in a number of fields but the overall rate of adoption and commercialisation appears to be average. Research is needed to identify the key processes at the different scales of action (macro, meso, micro) that act to support or hinder successful socio-economic outcomes. In particular, it is critical to engage at the meso- and micro-level to identify key processes, governance outcomes and relationships that have underpinned successful innovation in the past and are very likely to apply in the future. The research starts with improving our knowledge of technology users as a source of innovation but ends with improving the knowledge of technology users who wish to innovate.
Background
Many societies are faced with a disjuncture between levels of investment in innovation and actual outcomes in terms of social and economic development. We intend to identify the socio-technical networks that precede and form around new innovations: the knowledge flows, key actors, institutions, organisations, governance structures, and the way these networks operate to support or disincentivise innovation in NZ.
A recent OECD (2007) review of innovation policy recommends the removal of obstacles to increased entrepreneurship to allow greater growth of small, high-technology, value-added businesses. Factors to be addressed include capital markets, taxation, access to global markets and outward investment, improving supply of seed and venture capital, correcting mismatch in supply of skills and the provision of broadband. The recommendations on promoting innovation in the business sector focus on funding instruments, tax incentives, improving coordination among policy agencies (e.g., MoRST and MED) and specific programmes currently in place, e.g., Technology NZ and NZ Trade and Enterprise programmes. What was not so well specified are the workings of innovation processes within the socio-technical network. It is this blindspot that we hope to illuminate.
Our Approach
In our view, small-scale innovators are undervalued in current assessments. While there is undoubtedly a nostalgic romanticism towards our settler history, radical innovations do emerge from backyard sheds and small businesses, conjured into existence by electricians, welders, engineers, DIY 'experts' and so on. The focus we take on socio-technical networks leads to understanding how NZ differs from other nations in the way farms’ and firms’ networks are linked to innovation. The first element of our approach is to characterise the nature of the networks. There is an expanding literature on the geography of networks and their effect on innovation (e.g., Gertler and Levitte, 2005), social networks and their role in regional innovation (e.g., Brown and Duguid, 2002), the strength of network position and innovation (e.g., Boschma and ter Val, 2007), and interaction of network position and knowledge complexity on innovation uptake (Sorenson, Rivkin, and Fleming, 2006).
The second element of our approach is to argue that individuals in farms and firms are not just passive recipients of new technologies. Rather, they form active and dynamic relationships that can accept, reject, re-work or subvert the original intent of technologies. This builds on the argument of Oudshoorn and Pinch (2005) and others that innovation is a co-construction between users and technology. People interpret and use technology in various ways, and sometimes resist new technologies. Thus, users’ creative agency in shaping socio-technology change is influenced, but not determined, by state regulations, national political cultures, cultural norms, age, gender, and popular representations of current science, among other factors. Further, the importance of non-users suggests that they should by included in innovation research to show the reasons for rejection, rather than assuming that such people are laggards or slow adaptors. Finally, and vitally, the views of the public on technology, both as citizens and consumers, certainly influences innovation outcomes in the socio-technical network.