Technology's Theorists: Conceptions of Innovation in Relation to Science and Technology Policy

Abstract

For something that is widely considered to be of crucial, even strategic, importance, it is remarkable that there is so little agreement as to what is meant by technological innovation. And it is certainly not my intention in this article to give an answer that can satisfy everyone. My aim, rather, is to provide a kind of historical handle on the contemporary discussions of innovation and innovation policy, to attempt to place contemporary ideas in a longer time perspective. Technology's theorists, as we shall see, have come to their subject from different social positions and from different intellectual traditions, and there has been a fundamental tension between narrow and broad conceptions of technological innovation. Many theorists have been under the influence of what might be called a commercial bias according to which innovation has come to mean the creation of new marketable commodities. They subscribe to a narrow definition derived from a terminological distinction between invention and innovation, the first being the making of something new, the second being the successful launching of that new something in the marketplace. As opposed to the narrow, commercial definition, there has emerged in recent years the broader notion of an innovation process as a wide-ranging and multifaceted social activity. Included in its purview is the entire continuum, or chain, of scientific research and technological development from the most basic laboratory investigations to the marketing of new products, not forgetting all the