Innovation Doesn’t Work: The Explanatory Power of a Socio-Technical Approach

Lucas Becerra; Hernan Thomas

doi:10.17351/ests2023.1395

Lucas Becerra
Hernan Thomas

DOI: https://doi.org/10.17351/ests2023.1395

Abstract

This comment engages with two questions introduced by Alan Irwin’s introductory essay to this thematic collection on STS and Innovation (2023), and invites the reader to reflect on them as parts of a problem-solution relationship: When it comes to engaging with and acting upon socio-technical change, is ‘innovation’ part of the solution or of the problem? What new conceptual and empirical resources can STS bring to the study of innovation? The ‘problematic side’ (the first question) of our argument is focused on the theoretical constraints of ‘innovation’ as an analytical concept. Then, to address the ‘solution side’ (the second question), we introduce an approach to socio-technical change: the interactive socio-cognitive model. This model is presented as an analytical framework that makes explicit the explanatory (and programmatic) advantages that the notion of socio-technical change has compared to innovation.

References

Data Availability

Data published in this issue can be accessed in STS Infrastructures at: https://n2t.net/ark:/81416/p4ds3n.

References

Becerra, Lucas, and Hernán Thomas. 2017. “Six: Innovation, Cooperatives and Inclusive Development: Rethinking Technological Change and Social Inclusion.” In Towards Just and Sustainable Economies: the Social and Solidarity Economy North and South, edited by Peter North, and Molly Scott Cato, 99-116. Bristol, UK: Policy Press.

Bijker, Wiebe. 1995. Of Bicycles, Bakelites, and Bulbs. Toward a Theory of Sociotechnical Change. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

Callon, Michel. 1992. “The Dynamics of Techno-economic Networks.” In Technological Changes and Company Strategies: Economical and Sociological Perspectives, edited by Rod Coombs, Paolo Saviotti, and Vivien Walsh, 72–102. London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Publishers.

Callon, Michel. 1998. The Laws of the Markets. London: Blackwell.

Gramsci, Antonio. 1971. Selections from the Prison Notebooks. London: Lawrence and Wishart.

Irwin, Alan. 2023. “STS and Innovation: Borderlands, Regenerations and Critical Engagements.” Engaging Science, Technology, and Society 9(2): 41–56.

https://doi.org/10.17351/ests2023.1363.

MacKenzie, Donald. 2009. Material Markets: How Economics Agents are Constructed. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Schumpeter, Joseph Alois. 1950. Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy. Third edition. London, UK: Allen and Unwin.

Thomas, Hernán. 2008. “Estructuras cerradas vs. procesos dinámicos: trayectorias y estilos de innovación y cambio tecnológico.” In Actos, actores y artefactos. Sociología de la Tecnología [Acts, Actors and Artefacts. Sociology of Technology], edited by Hernán Thomas, and Alfonso Buch, 217-262. Bernal: Editorial UNQ.