Technological Innovation: Oversights and Foresights (review)

Technological Innovation attempts to make sense of the technological dynamism that appears to be endemic to the times and to provide some plausible suggestions for managing technological innovation. The editors had even greater ambitions: to develop a theory of technological innovation. With such a statement in their introduction, the editors generate great expectations—or skepticism, depending on the reader’s readiness to believe in the possibility of such grand theory. The impatient reader, who immediately turns to the concluding pages of the book, will be disappointed—or relieved. For the editors mainly reiterate the remarks made at the beginning of the book and, referring to the preceding chapters, reject the analogy between technological innovation and the natural process of variation and selection. Crucial to technological development, they conclude, is human intelligence, which is lacking in nature. For the rest, the editors still seem to hope that they “might create a useful theory of technological innovation” (p. 352).

These critical remarks, however, must not discourage anyone from studying the eighteen chapters of this volume in a systematic way. By steadily going from one chapter to the next, one finds that the editors have done a great job. Unlike many other collections of articles, there is a cohesion between the contributions, in spite of the differences in approach and levels of analysis. When one reaches the final chapter, one has passed through the results of recent research, reminiscences of those actively involved in innovation, case studies of successful and failed innovations—the “oversights and foresights” mentioned in the title—and contributions of a more theoretical nature. Although not omnipresent, it is evident that the central issue addressed by this book is that of reflection on innovation. An illustrative chapter is “Changing the Game of Corporate Research: Learning to Thrive in the Fog of Reality,” by John Seely Brown of the Xerox Corporation, one of two authors among twenty-nine not based at universities. Writing as an actor in the innovation process, instead of a distant observer, he notes the need for reflection by practitioners themselves, which involves interdisciplinarity. It also brings to the fore the human factor, the learning and “unlearning” element, the tension between foresight, oversight, and hindsight. How could a science-and-technology-based corporation change itself without addressing the past and the present using data and concepts from a variety of disciplines? Other chapters elaborate on the learning process and attitudes within organizations toward uncertainty. Gradually the reader begins to recognize the relation between contributions with titles as diverse as Jay B. Barney’s “On Flipping Coins and Making Technology Choices: Luck as an Explanation of Technological Foresight” and Mariann Jellinek’s “Organizational Entrepreneurship in Mature-Industry Firms: Foresight, Oversight, and Invisibility.”

The “disciplines” appearing in this book are technology, marketing, decision making, organizational processes, and strategy. Remarkably absent is economics, but there is no reason to regret that: when you plan to have an inspiring evening with young academic friends, you should not feel obliged to invite an old uncle whose stories and opinions on human rationality and the success of innovations have changed little since the Second World War. In the end, one feels anything but disappointed by the inability of the editors to create some monolithic theory of innovation. It would have spoiled the reader’s own attempts to gain new insights into the process of technological development. By leaving the theoretical issue unsettled, without resorting to postmodern “anything goes” ideology or procrustean horrors of strictly disciplinary concepts, this volume does challenge students of technological innovation to think for themselves. Or, as the preface puts it: ideas beget ideas.