ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on invention processes that arise during the "development of a complex technological system (CTS)". A CTS is any technology that consists of a set of interacting artifacts; interactions among these artifacts-and people and perhaps externs-enable that system to function. For handling CTS-related invention processes, the author presents the "cascade" model. In a nutshell, the cascade model posits that, during the CTS's development, emergent performance problems-recognized by people as shortcomings in that technology's constituent interactions-stimulate sequential spurts of invention. CTS can, and often does, include technological objects made by artisans working in different material technologies. In the replication process new activities arise for manufacturing multiple instances of the technological objects. In a techno-community such as electrical experimenters, astronomers, or shipbuilders, the idea for new CTS may be obvious to its more knowledgeable members, and so the vision arises independently among many people.
