ABSTRACT
Sophisticated understandings of the technological change produced by innovation studies, transition research, and social studies of technology are, paradoxically, at odds with their own dominant research designs and the methodological guidelines. A key insight from the social shaping of technology research and process studies of innovation has been that new technologies are formed gradually in multiple, particular (albeit interlinked) settings, by many different groups of actors, over long periods of time. Nonetheless, common research designs have not kept pace with these advances in knowledge. The mainstream innovation studies continue to treat sociotechnical change through quantitated data series and statistical analyses (variance epistemology), which freezes the identity of each innovation and actors and organizations involved to just one point in time, while it is well known that all these tend to change in the course of innovation projects. Alternatives developed to better address the processual nature of change have recoursed to intensive ethnographic engagements on particular sites or broad-stroke historical studies and systems analyses, yet have been unable to address both the intricacy of sociotechnical phenomena and the extent of the shaping process in tandem. To ensure that research is able to continue to provide grounded insight into the processes of innovation and sociotechnical change, this book argues for the ambitious reconceptualization of research designs. This would include a move from simple “snap shot” studies and broad-stroke “hollow” evidence to a more radical even if more arduous investigation design that links together a string of studies in different settings, at different times, and with different granularities of analysis.
There has been increasing interest in extending current methodological and analytical approaches through longitudinal and multi-site research templates. The biographies of artifacts and practices framework deployed and taken forward in the present book builds on a twenty-year-long development in different sociotechnical settings. Chapter 2 outlines the rationale and basic principles of the biographies of artifacts and practices approach. It elaborates how they differ from more conventional methodological approaches in studies of innovation and diffusion through a detailed discussion of the interrelations between observation units, analysis units, and research questions. The chapter further elaborates the data and analysis methods in the present book and elaborates its theory-building approach, which differentiates the methodology from naively inductive or deductive research orientations and methodology templates.
