ABSTRACT
Technological change in chemistry evolves through the development of new chemical products and processes. In this technological development process, experimentation is one of the most important practices (cf. e.g. Holmes and Levere 2000). This means that experimentation is crucial for creating new technological knowledge about chemical materials and chemical reactions. Importantly, it is not a single, stable organizational activity. Instead, as previous research has argued (D’Adderio 2001), it consists of a cluster of activities which are closely linked together. One of the most recent studies dealing with various kinds of experimentation is by Thomke (1998: 744). He has identified that experimentation consists of four main activities which together comprise an iterative learning cycle. These activities include designing an experiment, building an apparatus to conduct the experiment, running the experiment and analysing the results.
