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Chapter 10 The Constitution of Technological Fields
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C h a p t e r 10 T h e Constitution of Technological Fields
"One of the primamj characteristics of a system builder is the ability to construct or to force unity from diversity, centralization in the face of pluralism, and coherencefrom chaos. This construction often involves the destruction of alternative systems." Hughes (1987: p. 51) 10.0. THE THEORETICAL AMBITION OF THE STUDY REVISITED The above quotation by Hughes seems to glue the concluding chapters together very well. On the one hand, it signals the characteristics and the important role of the entrepreneur that was emphasized in the former chapter. On the other hand, it also reminds us that new technologies rely on larger systems of technical and technological knowledge. However, here in the final chapter, I will climb the last step of the ladder trying to reach an imaginary platform from which I will take an overview of the study of the evolution of the biotechnology industry. The main aim of this final chapter is to solve my initial theoretical aspiration by generalizing some of the knowledge gained from the empirical data on the constitution and creation of technological fields. The focus of this book has been on small biotechnology firms that have developed biotechnology products and processes. The study gives multiple examples of how five firms handled problems concerning the routinization of their behavior and (how the firms in question handled) the development of their basic technology. The book has outlined how strategies are connected to the way in which the firms internally and externally have been able to mobilize resources through extensive networking arrangements (formal and informal, and the dynamics of turning research based networks into business networks). Despite that the small biotechnology firms have very different points of departure and preconditions in terms of technology, competencies and economy, it is difficult from the cases to deduce a consistent model that depicts how a technological field is constituted. However, I believe that the empirical material still gives some valuable and important organizational and sociological insights that can be drawn upon in the discussion on the constitutive forces and mechanisms of new technological fields and how they evolve.
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In this chapter, I will leave the aspects of network and strategy and solely focus on routinization, the role of communities of practice and the development of technological fields. The chapter starts by taking a firm based view on the issue of constitution of technological fields. The discussion focuses on the problem of generalization from the case studies and the role of organizational routines in the development of new technological fields. By pointing to three dimensions or constitutional mechanisms, the chapter revisits and highlights the systems approach and the social actor oriented approach that are outlined in Part II and the actor perspective that has guided Parts III and IV.
10.1. THE EMBEDDEDNESS OF ROUTINES, COMMUNITIES OF PRACTICE, AND TECHNOLOGICAL SYSTEMS The concept of "technological field" has two meanings that are not separate but should be seen as constitutive units of analysis representing a micro and macro sociological perspective on the evolution of new technological fields. The three views presented represent an organizational perspective, a community of practice perspective and a systems perspective on the development of technological fields. The idea is not to see the three as separate entities but rather representing a holistic view on the constitution of technological fields. This can then be seen as an entrepreneurial asset or an ability that allows one to refine and combine new ideas and develop them into new ventures and new innovative products by engaging in evolving communities of practice that are specialized and rooted in a technological system. The systems approach takes a social constructivist view of the evolution of technological systems and elaborates on contributions from the edited book by Bijker, Hughes and Pinch: "The Social Construction of Technology" (1987), whereas the actor approach departs from the discussion on the role of communities of practice in the constitution of technological fields (Kreiner & Lee, 2000; Lee, 1999; Constant II, 1987, 1984; Wenger, 1998). The discussions on the systems perspective and the social perspective draw heavily from the firm based view focusing on the development of organizational routines. For example, it is obvious that there are no clear distinctions between actors struggling to establish and engage in communities of practice networks external to the organization and the utilization of these communities into their home organization. For each mode of analysis (community, system, organization), the relevant social groups have mechanisms to identify the relevant actors, both socially and technologically. For communities of practice that mechanism is tradition of practice. For systems, it is momentum. For organizations, it is technological function and the development of routines (Constant II, 1987: pp. 237-238).
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Figure 10.1. The embeddedness of technological fields
Related technological fields System
Technological field
o
0 Organinfion of practice
0
0
(~ ommunity practice
Community of practice [
0 0 0 of practice
practice
Source: Authors development of figure from Constant It (1987:p. 238). Figure 10.1 stems from the work of Constant II and emphasizes the relationship of an organization to communities of practice and related technological fields. The small circles represent individual community members. My addition to the original figure is the concept of technological field, which has replaced Constant's notion of "host culture." Moreover, I have emphasized that the firms must have relations to multiple communities of practice and that that communities of practice are embedded in other technological fields and communities representing existing technological fields from which each firm can engage in or cooperate with through network arrangements to build up new competencies. The figure seeks to visualize the structural relationships among communities of practitioners,organizations, systems and technological fields that the organizations triesto develop and utilize.Moreover, the figure it indicatesthe goal of this chapter: To explain the development of technological fields as a social process driven by interrelated and almost invisible circles consisting of interacting individuals, organizations and communities of practitionersthat are embedded in a wider system of communities of practicerelying on existingtechnologicalfields.
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10.2. THE ROLE ORGANIZATIONAL ROUTINES Each of the five case studies reveal an implicit dissatisfaction concerning the incommensurability of the technologies in question. The explanation for the unsatisfactory situation is that biotechnology, both as a technological field and as an industry, can not be studied as a single unified area belonging to a specific industry. Hence, each of the firms focuses on different technological areas in the new biotechnologies. Therefore, the firms specialize in different industrial areas or segments. This means that the goal to study how the technology and the field interact has been almost impossible due to the characteristics of the technologies in question. Instead, the study has shown how different types of entrepreneurial firms have created a platform for their activities through strategic processes and network organization. Therefore, a conclusion that captures the constitutional forces of the new and evolving biotechnologies has to take the multiple technological aspects into consideration, especially the creation of communities of practice that evolve along with the development of new technologies, new firms and new institutions in field. The study points to the fact that the creation takes place in a kind of preentrepreneurial stage where new techniques and processes are developed as a controlled breeding of researchers in basic research institutions (universities) and industrial researchers. To gain insight in what we can call the micro levels micro level, it takes that attention is narrowed to a single technology or technological segment. In that respect, it is not very useful to do what I have done by trying to explain the dynamics of a diverse enabling technology. The study compensates for this problem by engaging in a number of in-depth case studies of how strategies are unfolding in some incommensurable technological sub-disciplines, but fails to do so due to the difficulties in making comparable conclusions on how technological fields are constituted from each of the case studies. Instead, an alternative question can be asked: What mechanisms or abilities allow small entrepreneurs to develop and progress through a series of discontinuous movements? Such a discussion has to concentrate on the mechanisms and dynamics that secure that development is taking place from one phase to the next, and has to be based theoretically on the development of organizational routines. There are two alternatives to take on such a discussion. The discussion could be founded in neoinstitutional analysis of organizations since this school of thought has had one of its focal points on how technologies, procedures and organizational forms are established through isomorphic processes (Powell & DiMaggio, 1991). The implication of a neo-institutional approach is that the norms, procedures and routines will become alike since organizations tend to copy successful behavior in their field. This aspect has been crucial because the activities taking place in the small biotechnology firms in terms of products and development projects have unknown perspectives and consequences where the actors involved only have vague ideas of the economic and technical prospects of their technologies. The problem is that the F
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cases do not display identifiable sets of institutionalized processes across the organizational units that can account for how an organizational actor in biotechnology in a firm organizes activities. Neither do they show how an actor in a public institution promotes and regulates the technology in question. In other words, it is very difficult to identify institutional elements and hereafter point to the isomorphic processes in the field that are also believed as successful scripts or blue prints leading to success. A second approach to conclude the book, preserving an emphasis on the development of routines as the stabilizing element in securing progress towards accomplishing the goals and aspirations of the firm, is to point to the prescriptive economic models on technological development. These models emphasize different activities such as new scientific and technical advance, market demand and the user and producer experiences as the driving force behind new technological innovations (Rothwell & Zegveld, 1983; Lundvall, 1992). However, my studies give no single or simple answer pointing to the driving force behind the development of the biotechnological industries as being solely determined by economic factors. Rather, my studies show that technological fields develop through multiple overlapping social processes where the goals and aspirations of the actors involved are displayed: A process that is driven by actors, actors that can be of course driven by economic motives, possibilities or restrictions. The discussion on dynamism and progress has to be constructed from the concept of the technological field even though my studies show that the biotechnological field only exists semantically - a way of talking about biomolecular activities that is concerned with the development of new processes, services, techniques and products. If one wants to understand the development and formation of the technology, one has to focus attention on the single disciplines or sub-technologies that constitute the new biotechnologies. Moreover, the study shows that the precondition for the development of new products is that new knowledge is crosses institutionalized bodies of knowledge. This competence crossing corresponds to the way ThermoGen organized interdisciplinary development groups with its strategic partners. Another example was when AndCare utilized the user needs from the pediatric clinics with its development team of electrochemical technicians. Hence, knowledge of user/customer needs and technological possibilities were merged. A second interesting aspect of the formation of technological fields is that new technologies always develop from "old technological" knowledge. Therefore, new technological fields can not be conceived as a single phenomena, but only as consistent historical and social events that interact and form new and overlapping communities of practice. Apparently, new technologies can not be studied separately from their organizational, institutional and historical context. Indeed the five case reflect this since it is obvious that the ability to master a process and the development of a whole new product are connected with the ability to handle old production techniques that small entrepreneurs in a new technological field rarely possess. Also,
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some of the in-depth case studies show that some technological fields have evolved over long periods of time, and that the institutional origin is important in the understanding of the timing of an innovation or technology. This is supported by the cases that reveal that in the biotechnologies a technological division of labor has appeared between the small entrepreneurs, who primarily possess and develop the new knowledge, and large companies that upscale the new processes. It is fair to assume that the nature of the interactive processes concerning the formation and constitution of new technological fields reflects how the structural holes are filled by actors engaging in network activities. Hence, the structure of the networks depicts the formal division of labor between the actors in the field. It can be in knowledge based networks or financial networks where the actors are given or have reached formal status due to their ability to solve the specific problems giving legitimacy to the field in question. Tracing these tracks empirically means that you as a researcher have to investigate and analyze the dynamics and interactive processes between actors (institutions, firms and individuals) that have assisted in shaping the communities of practice, and thereby create and give legitimacy to the development of a specific technological field. In the study, this corresponds to the interviews with the university professors about the initiation of collaborative arrangements and the network interaction that appears in the period from when the basic research at the universities is carried out until the ideas resulted in the formation of a new biotechnology firm. The AndCare, Kem-En-Tec, ThermoGen and Calgene cases all display this transformation process from basic research at university to the formation of a new firm. Moreover, these case studies also reveal the considerations and decision making processes regarding the establishment of new in house competencies and the formation of external partnerships on the corporate activities. Theoretically, these observations imply that the firms develop their technological concepts and knowledge base specializing in one of the sub-disciplines in what we will call the biotechnological meaning universe. This takes development on two levels: First, access to or maybe engagement in the establishment of a community of practice around the research disciplines to legitimize the technology to commercial actors. Second, organizational routines have to be developed to secure that the firms are moving in the direction towards commercialization of their technology. According to the phase model (Figure 5.1) these steps equal the steps from the research project phase over the development of a business plan to the development of a new product, service or process. In the next phase, the development of new organizational routines imposes the breeding of the established subsystems (or community of practice) and some of the older subsystem in the biotechnologies. This can, for example, be building up new competencies into production that force the newly established technological systems to be coupled to a community of practice into fermentation technologies on the internal development of new routines which happen through employment of people with the new skills to the organization. The
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breeding of skills also happens through the clash between professional environments in the search process when scanning for available modes of production. When the firms move from one phase to the next, the organizational routines of the firm activities are the carrier that leads to progress. In five cases this dynamic is illustrated in three dimensions. The first dimension is the build up of in-house competencies by employing new types of personnel with professional backgrounds that are new to the organization. In opposition to this type of organizational decision making is the choice to search for a corporate partner to take care of the new activities: Hence, reinforcing, concentrating and specializing in the existing routines. The second dimension is a formalization of the established routines takes place when the formal structures are established and functional specialization replaces mutual adjustment. The third dimension, where the routines assist in creating development, is related to the period when the network formation is formalized. From having an almost stochastic numbers of networks relations, these networks gradually formalize and manage as the small biotechnology firm is met by demands to document reproducibility, product safety and customer service. 10.3. THE ROLE OF COMMUNITIES OF PRACTICE
A new technological field is constructed through social interaction in technological communities that take place in a variety of institutional fora. I find it fruitful to think of the involved actors as belonging to different organizational and institutional contexts who construct a shared set of values, beliefs and norms. Gradually the technological community spreads its activities to take command of more and more activities in the technological field. Norus (1998a: p.1) The major problem of having a community of practice approach to the understanding of the constitution of technological fields is the diversity of views meanings that authors in the field give these practice communities. This is primarily due to the unit of analysis that they study and their view of the functioning of these practice communities. Constant II (1984, 1987) sees communities of practice as the social locus of technological knowledge and organizations as the social locus of technological function. In Lee's studies, she views communities of practice as a clash between two separate practices when studying the post-acquisition process when two high-tech firms merged (Lee, 1999; Kreiner & Lee, 2000), and emphasizes the learning aspect of these communities. Wenger's (1998) and Bramming's (2001) mode of looking at communities of practice is more from the individual organization emphasizing the cognitive aspects of the functioning of communities. Having an internal organizational view on communities of practice, they view a community of practice as a meaning system where the interpretation of competence and the belongingness to a practice community have absolute priority. Hence a community of practice is local, relational and carried by assessment (Bramming, 2001).
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The prior section looked at the intersection between routinization of technological activities in the organizational setting and the development of technologies. Firms engaged in multiple communities of practices try to develop new products and solve technical problems. From Figure 10.1 and from my results and data, my primary interest is in the establishment and function of the communities practice and their specialization in larger technological systems. The most prominent examples of the function of communities of practice and the specialization in a technological system are found in the case of Calgene, where the plant breeders competed with the Monsanto and Zeneca researchers to develop a technological system for the development of a genetically modified plant. Here we see that there was more than one competing practice at play and thereby more visions of how to come about this type of developmental task. The assessment part of the community of practice came when Cornell researchers questioned whether the same result that Calgene had with the Flavr Savr@ tomato could have been reached with traditional breeding techniques. A cynical view on the concept of face value assessment was that when acquiring the company, Monsanto probably found the knowledge and intellectual property worth buying after consulting its own development team in the specific community of practice and having it to judge whether Calgene researchers were competent. This example also shows that in a technological system there are not only competing firms but also competing communities of practice that evaluate each others accomplishments. These empirical observations equal the notion of the concept of assessment done by Wenger (1998) and Bramming (2001) and also support their ideas that communities of practice are meaning systems that construct a shared set of values, beliefs and norms. The patent problem that turned out between Calgene and Zeneca only shows that different meanings, norms and values are part of each community. Another good example of communities of practice in action is the experience of Kem-En-Tec when it first tried to get access to the pharmaceutical industry. The superiority of the Kem-En-Tec technologies, compared to Novo Nordisk, were simply ignored due to fact that Novo Nordisk relied on a skill base that was rooted in non-complimentary communities of practice belonging to another technological system and maybe also another technological field. A more successful example of the interaction between new communities of practice and old technological systems and their communities of practice was the ThermoGen approach to crossing existing technological fields by establishing interdisciplinary development teams between both technological system and communities of practice.
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10.4. THE ROLE OF TECHNOLOGICAL SYSTEMS There are number of theoretical studies where the development of new technologies are treated as evolving stems (Garud & Karnee, 2001; Henderson et al., 1999; Rosenberg, 1994; Rosenberg & Gelijns, 1994, 1995; Hughes, 1987). According to Hughes (1987), technological systems contain, messy complex, problem-solving components and underlying communities of practice. Among the components in the technological systems are physical artefacts. In the biotechnology context, it could be the overlying technology field of biomolecular techniques from which it is possible to produce macro molecules. This would spread into a number technological fields that according to Figure 2.1, for example, can be used to manufacture proteins, monoclonal antibodies etc. These systems would again be represented in competing communities of practice representing professional disciplines and modes of production. According to Hughes, the technology systems are multifaceted and complex. He includes the systems organizations such as manufacturing firms, service providers, and venture capital firms. Organizations that incorporate communities of practice are usually labeled scientific, such as books, articles and university teaching and research programs. This is very similar to my view of the construction of the biotechnology community in Chapter 3. However, I tend to keep an actor perspective excluding the type of artefacts such as book and written materials. In my conception of the biotechnology community, the actors are the carriers of that knowledge, and that it is the network interaction between the actors that have shaped the biotechnology community. Hence, I conclude that the concept of technological systems can be compare with a set of Chinese boxes. The technological system encompasses the technological fields. Thereby the concept of field is seen as relying and depending on more than one technology system. Especially in the biotechnology industry, we have to conceive that the technology relies on a number of technological systems covering multiple communities of practice. Some of these communities are tightly connected, some are loosely coupled and some seems to have no joint relations. In the technology systems there are competing practice communities, struggling to take command of the dominant design configuration into the field. Also, the technology system consists of collaborative communities of practice that, in the ways Hughes describes it, take responsibility for activities that have to do with the functioning of the system as a whole by being a mediating services across fields, systems, communities and routines. These organizations are service providers, offering services to a variety of actors in the technological fields across systems and communities of practices, changing and forming new organizational routines in new small biotechnology firms and also in well consolidated large firms into a variety of industries.
Incyte Genomics, which switched strategy and developed a technology that is in the intersection between biotectmology and the development of irfformation
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technology, is not only a mediating service provider in both the biotechnology firms but also provides services to the large pharmaceutical firms. By having a deep insight in both the gene sequencing and informations systems, it has been able to set the standard of how firms and research institutions can explore and exploit the outcome of the mapping of the humane genome. By providing its the subscribers with its database system, Incyte Genomics has been able to engage into two technological systems, taking advantage of its Silicon Valley location and penetrating and engaging in multiple communities of practice. This interaction has made it possible to develop a technological platform where the company has become a clone of a biotechnology firm and an IT-firm. 10.5. FOUR ENTREPRENEURIAL ABILITIES IN THE CONSTITUTION OF TECHNOLOGICAL FIELDS I think that the conclusion that stems from this chapter on the constitution of new technological fields concerning the entrepreneurial aspects of utilizing technologies points to the entrepreneurs' abilities to combine and develop new (scientific) knowledge to products, services and processes. Four abilities or functional characteristics of the entrepreneur appear to take a constitutive view on the formation of new technologies. Due to the over-socialized view of this chapter, the economic aspect of technological development has been neglected. 1. The ability to build up and engage in a number communities of practices around specific bodies of knowledge 2. The ability to utilize this knowledge to develop a technological skill base from which new products and services can be developed 3. The ability to transform knowledge located in communities of practice into organizational routines in order to develop a coherent technological competence base 4. The ability to cross and stay in contact with other technological systems to make new discoveries to further exploit and explore the technologies and to build up new competencies and developments To have and develop a further understanding of interrelatedness of technological systems, communities of practice and the development of organizational routines would take a more in-depth analysis of one company specializing in one technological system. I would guess that such a study would be based on ethnographic and anthropological research methods since the researcher has to go native among the natives. I think that Lee (1998) tries to gain this type of insight, but it appears that she is too much a part of the transformation processes inside the firm, which in some parts make it seems like action research. More researchers have to be attracted into the research and investigation of understanding how technological fields, technological systems, communities of practice and organizational routines evolve, co-evolve and are constituted. Welcome on board.
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C h a p t e r 10 T h e Constitution of Technological Fields
"One of the primamj characteristics of a system builder is the ability to construct or to force unity from diversity, centralization in the face of pluralism, and coherencefrom chaos. This construction often involves the destruction of alternative systems." Hughes (1987: p. 51) 10.0. THE THEORETICAL AMBITION OF THE STUDY REVISITED The above quotation by Hughes seems to glue the concluding chapters together very well. On the one hand, it signals the characteristics and the important role of the entrepreneur that was emphasized in the former chapter. On the other hand, it also reminds us that new technologies rely on larger systems of technical and technological knowledge. However, here in the final chapter, I will climb the last step of the ladder trying to reach an imaginary platform from which I will take an overview of the study of the evolution of the biotechnology industry. The main aim of this final chapter is to solve my initial theoretical aspiration by generalizing some of the knowledge gained from the empirical data on the constitution and creation of technological fields. The focus of this book has been on small biotechnology firms that have developed biotechnology products and processes. The study gives multiple examples of how five firms handled problems concerning the routinization of their behavior and (how the firms in question handled) the development of their basic technology. The book has outlined how strategies are connected to the way in which the firms internally and externally have been able to mobilize resources through extensive networking arrangements (formal and informal, and the dynamics of turning research based networks into business networks). Despite that the small biotechnology firms have very different points of departure and preconditions in terms of technology, competencies and economy, it is difficult from the cases to deduce a consistent model that depicts how a technological field is constituted. However, I believe that the empirical material still gives some valuable and important organizational and sociological insights that can be drawn upon in the discussion on the constitutive forces and mechanisms of new technological fields and how they evolve.
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In this chapter, I will leave the aspects of network and strategy and solely focus on routinization, the role of communities of practice and the development of technological fields. The chapter starts by taking a firm based view on the issue of constitution of technological fields. The discussion focuses on the problem of generalization from the case studies and the role of organizational routines in the development of new technological fields. By pointing to three dimensions or constitutional mechanisms, the chapter revisits and highlights the systems approach and the social actor oriented approach that are outlined in Part II and the actor perspective that has guided Parts III and IV.
10.1. THE EMBEDDEDNESS OF ROUTINES, COMMUNITIES OF PRACTICE, AND TECHNOLOGICAL SYSTEMS The concept of "technological field" has two meanings that are not separate but should be seen as constitutive units of analysis representing a micro and macro sociological perspective on the evolution of new technological fields. The three views presented represent an organizational perspective, a community of practice perspective and a systems perspective on the development of technological fields. The idea is not to see the three as separate entities but rather representing a holistic view on the constitution of technological fields. This can then be seen as an entrepreneurial asset or an ability that allows one to refine and combine new ideas and develop them into new ventures and new innovative products by engaging in evolving communities of practice that are specialized and rooted in a technological system. The systems approach takes a social constructivist view of the evolution of technological systems and elaborates on contributions from the edited book by Bijker, Hughes and Pinch: "The Social Construction of Technology" (1987), whereas the actor approach departs from the discussion on the role of communities of practice in the constitution of technological fields (Kreiner & Lee, 2000; Lee, 1999; Constant II, 1987, 1984; Wenger, 1998). The discussions on the systems perspective and the social perspective draw heavily from the firm based view focusing on the development of organizational routines. For example, it is obvious that there are no clear distinctions between actors struggling to establish and engage in communities of practice networks external to the organization and the utilization of these communities into their home organization. For each mode of analysis (community, system, organization), the relevant social groups have mechanisms to identify the relevant actors, both socially and technologically. For communities of practice that mechanism is tradition of practice. For systems, it is momentum. For organizations, it is technological function and the development of routines (Constant II, 1987: pp. 237-238).
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Figure 10.1. The embeddedness of technological fields
Related technological fields System
Technological field
o
0 Organinfion of practice
0
0
(~ ommunity practice
Community of practice [
0 0 0 of practice
practice
Source: Authors development of figure from Constant It (1987:p. 238). Figure 10.1 stems from the work of Constant II and emphasizes the relationship of an organization to communities of practice and related technological fields. The small circles represent individual community members. My addition to the original figure is the concept of technological field, which has replaced Constant's notion of "host culture." Moreover, I have emphasized that the firms must have relations to multiple communities of practice and that that communities of practice are embedded in other technological fields and communities representing existing technological fields from which each firm can engage in or cooperate with through network arrangements to build up new competencies. The figure seeks to visualize the structural relationships among communities of practitioners,organizations, systems and technological fields that the organizations triesto develop and utilize.Moreover, the figure it indicatesthe goal of this chapter: To explain the development of technological fields as a social process driven by interrelated and almost invisible circles consisting of interacting individuals, organizations and communities of practitionersthat are embedded in a wider system of communities of practicerelying on existingtechnologicalfields.
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10.2. THE ROLE ORGANIZATIONAL ROUTINES Each of the five case studies reveal an implicit dissatisfaction concerning the incommensurability of the technologies in question. The explanation for the unsatisfactory situation is that biotechnology, both as a technological field and as an industry, can not be studied as a single unified area belonging to a specific industry. Hence, each of the firms focuses on different technological areas in the new biotechnologies. Therefore, the firms specialize in different industrial areas or segments. This means that the goal to study how the technology and the field interact has been almost impossible due to the characteristics of the technologies in question. Instead, the study has shown how different types of entrepreneurial firms have created a platform for their activities through strategic processes and network organization. Therefore, a conclusion that captures the constitutional forces of the new and evolving biotechnologies has to take the multiple technological aspects into consideration, especially the creation of communities of practice that evolve along with the development of new technologies, new firms and new institutions in field. The study points to the fact that the creation takes place in a kind of preentrepreneurial stage where new techniques and processes are developed as a controlled breeding of researchers in basic research institutions (universities) and industrial researchers. To gain insight in what we can call the micro levels micro level, it takes that attention is narrowed to a single technology or technological segment. In that respect, it is not very useful to do what I have done by trying to explain the dynamics of a diverse enabling technology. The study compensates for this problem by engaging in a number of in-depth case studies of how strategies are unfolding in some incommensurable technological sub-disciplines, but fails to do so due to the difficulties in making comparable conclusions on how technological fields are constituted from each of the case studies. Instead, an alternative question can be asked: What mechanisms or abilities allow small entrepreneurs to develop and progress through a series of discontinuous movements? Such a discussion has to concentrate on the mechanisms and dynamics that secure that development is taking place from one phase to the next, and has to be based theoretically on the development of organizational routines. There are two alternatives to take on such a discussion. The discussion could be founded in neoinstitutional analysis of organizations since this school of thought has had one of its focal points on how technologies, procedures and organizational forms are established through isomorphic processes (Powell & DiMaggio, 1991). The implication of a neo-institutional approach is that the norms, procedures and routines will become alike since organizations tend to copy successful behavior in their field. This aspect has been crucial because the activities taking place in the small biotechnology firms in terms of products and development projects have unknown perspectives and consequences where the actors involved only have vague ideas of the economic and technical prospects of their technologies. The problem is that the F
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cases do not display identifiable sets of institutionalized processes across the organizational units that can account for how an organizational actor in biotechnology in a firm organizes activities. Neither do they show how an actor in a public institution promotes and regulates the technology in question. In other words, it is very difficult to identify institutional elements and hereafter point to the isomorphic processes in the field that are also believed as successful scripts or blue prints leading to success. A second approach to conclude the book, preserving an emphasis on the development of routines as the stabilizing element in securing progress towards accomplishing the goals and aspirations of the firm, is to point to the prescriptive economic models on technological development. These models emphasize different activities such as new scientific and technical advance, market demand and the user and producer experiences as the driving force behind new technological innovations (Rothwell & Zegveld, 1983; Lundvall, 1992). However, my studies give no single or simple answer pointing to the driving force behind the development of the biotechnological industries as being solely determined by economic factors. Rather, my studies show that technological fields develop through multiple overlapping social processes where the goals and aspirations of the actors involved are displayed: A process that is driven by actors, actors that can be of course driven by economic motives, possibilities or restrictions. The discussion on dynamism and progress has to be constructed from the concept of the technological field even though my studies show that the biotechnological field only exists semantically - a way of talking about biomolecular activities that is concerned with the development of new processes, services, techniques and products. If one wants to understand the development and formation of the technology, one has to focus attention on the single disciplines or sub-technologies that constitute the new biotechnologies. Moreover, the study shows that the precondition for the development of new products is that new knowledge is crosses institutionalized bodies of knowledge. This competence crossing corresponds to the way ThermoGen organized interdisciplinary development groups with its strategic partners. Another example was when AndCare utilized the user needs from the pediatric clinics with its development team of electrochemical technicians. Hence, knowledge of user/customer needs and technological possibilities were merged. A second interesting aspect of the formation of technological fields is that new technologies always develop from "old technological" knowledge. Therefore, new technological fields can not be conceived as a single phenomena, but only as consistent historical and social events that interact and form new and overlapping communities of practice. Apparently, new technologies can not be studied separately from their organizational, institutional and historical context. Indeed the five case reflect this since it is obvious that the ability to master a process and the development of a whole new product are connected with the ability to handle old production techniques that small entrepreneurs in a new technological field rarely possess. Also,
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some of the in-depth case studies show that some technological fields have evolved over long periods of time, and that the institutional origin is important in the understanding of the timing of an innovation or technology. This is supported by the cases that reveal that in the biotechnologies a technological division of labor has appeared between the small entrepreneurs, who primarily possess and develop the new knowledge, and large companies that upscale the new processes. It is fair to assume that the nature of the interactive processes concerning the formation and constitution of new technological fields reflects how the structural holes are filled by actors engaging in network activities. Hence, the structure of the networks depicts the formal division of labor between the actors in the field. It can be in knowledge based networks or financial networks where the actors are given or have reached formal status due to their ability to solve the specific problems giving legitimacy to the field in question. Tracing these tracks empirically means that you as a researcher have to investigate and analyze the dynamics and interactive processes between actors (institutions, firms and individuals) that have assisted in shaping the communities of practice, and thereby create and give legitimacy to the development of a specific technological field. In the study, this corresponds to the interviews with the university professors about the initiation of collaborative arrangements and the network interaction that appears in the period from when the basic research at the universities is carried out until the ideas resulted in the formation of a new biotechnology firm. The AndCare, Kem-En-Tec, ThermoGen and Calgene cases all display this transformation process from basic research at university to the formation of a new firm. Moreover, these case studies also reveal the considerations and decision making processes regarding the establishment of new in house competencies and the formation of external partnerships on the corporate activities. Theoretically, these observations imply that the firms develop their technological concepts and knowledge base specializing in one of the sub-disciplines in what we will call the biotechnological meaning universe. This takes development on two levels: First, access to or maybe engagement in the establishment of a community of practice around the research disciplines to legitimize the technology to commercial actors. Second, organizational routines have to be developed to secure that the firms are moving in the direction towards commercialization of their technology. According to the phase model (Figure 5.1) these steps equal the steps from the research project phase over the development of a business plan to the development of a new product, service or process. In the next phase, the development of new organizational routines imposes the breeding of the established subsystems (or community of practice) and some of the older subsystem in the biotechnologies. This can, for example, be building up new competencies into production that force the newly established technological systems to be coupled to a community of practice into fermentation technologies on the internal development of new routines which happen through employment of people with the new skills to the organization. The
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breeding of skills also happens through the clash between professional environments in the search process when scanning for available modes of production. When the firms move from one phase to the next, the organizational routines of the firm activities are the carrier that leads to progress. In five cases this dynamic is illustrated in three dimensions. The first dimension is the build up of in-house competencies by employing new types of personnel with professional backgrounds that are new to the organization. In opposition to this type of organizational decision making is the choice to search for a corporate partner to take care of the new activities: Hence, reinforcing, concentrating and specializing in the existing routines. The second dimension is a formalization of the established routines takes place when the formal structures are established and functional specialization replaces mutual adjustment. The third dimension, where the routines assist in creating development, is related to the period when the network formation is formalized. From having an almost stochastic numbers of networks relations, these networks gradually formalize and manage as the small biotechnology firm is met by demands to document reproducibility, product safety and customer service. 10.3. THE ROLE OF COMMUNITIES OF PRACTICE
A new technological field is constructed through social interaction in technological communities that take place in a variety of institutional fora. I find it fruitful to think of the involved actors as belonging to different organizational and institutional contexts who construct a shared set of values, beliefs and norms. Gradually the technological community spreads its activities to take command of more and more activities in the technological field. Norus (1998a: p.1) The major problem of having a community of practice approach to the understanding of the constitution of technological fields is the diversity of views meanings that authors in the field give these practice communities. This is primarily due to the unit of analysis that they study and their view of the functioning of these practice communities. Constant II (1984, 1987) sees communities of practice as the social locus of technological knowledge and organizations as the social locus of technological function. In Lee's studies, she views communities of practice as a clash between two separate practices when studying the post-acquisition process when two high-tech firms merged (Lee, 1999; Kreiner & Lee, 2000), and emphasizes the learning aspect of these communities. Wenger's (1998) and Bramming's (2001) mode of looking at communities of practice is more from the individual organization emphasizing the cognitive aspects of the functioning of communities. Having an internal organizational view on communities of practice, they view a community of practice as a meaning system where the interpretation of competence and the belongingness to a practice community have absolute priority. Hence a community of practice is local, relational and carried by assessment (Bramming, 2001).
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The prior section looked at the intersection between routinization of technological activities in the organizational setting and the development of technologies. Firms engaged in multiple communities of practices try to develop new products and solve technical problems. From Figure 10.1 and from my results and data, my primary interest is in the establishment and function of the communities practice and their specialization in larger technological systems. The most prominent examples of the function of communities of practice and the specialization in a technological system are found in the case of Calgene, where the plant breeders competed with the Monsanto and Zeneca researchers to develop a technological system for the development of a genetically modified plant. Here we see that there was more than one competing practice at play and thereby more visions of how to come about this type of developmental task. The assessment part of the community of practice came when Cornell researchers questioned whether the same result that Calgene had with the Flavr Savr@ tomato could have been reached with traditional breeding techniques. A cynical view on the concept of face value assessment was that when acquiring the company, Monsanto probably found the knowledge and intellectual property worth buying after consulting its own development team in the specific community of practice and having it to judge whether Calgene researchers were competent. This example also shows that in a technological system there are not only competing firms but also competing communities of practice that evaluate each others accomplishments. These empirical observations equal the notion of the concept of assessment done by Wenger (1998) and Bramming (2001) and also support their ideas that communities of practice are meaning systems that construct a shared set of values, beliefs and norms. The patent problem that turned out between Calgene and Zeneca only shows that different meanings, norms and values are part of each community. Another good example of communities of practice in action is the experience of Kem-En-Tec when it first tried to get access to the pharmaceutical industry. The superiority of the Kem-En-Tec technologies, compared to Novo Nordisk, were simply ignored due to fact that Novo Nordisk relied on a skill base that was rooted in non-complimentary communities of practice belonging to another technological system and maybe also another technological field. A more successful example of the interaction between new communities of practice and old technological systems and their communities of practice was the ThermoGen approach to crossing existing technological fields by establishing interdisciplinary development teams between both technological system and communities of practice.
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10.4. THE ROLE OF TECHNOLOGICAL SYSTEMS There are number of theoretical studies where the development of new technologies are treated as evolving stems (Garud & Karnee, 2001; Henderson et al., 1999; Rosenberg, 1994; Rosenberg & Gelijns, 1994, 1995; Hughes, 1987). According to Hughes (1987), technological systems contain, messy complex, problem-solving components and underlying communities of practice. Among the components in the technological systems are physical artefacts. In the biotechnology context, it could be the overlying technology field of biomolecular techniques from which it is possible to produce macro molecules. This would spread into a number technological fields that according to Figure 2.1, for example, can be used to manufacture proteins, monoclonal antibodies etc. These systems would again be represented in competing communities of practice representing professional disciplines and modes of production. According to Hughes, the technology systems are multifaceted and complex. He includes the systems organizations such as manufacturing firms, service providers, and venture capital firms. Organizations that incorporate communities of practice are usually labeled scientific, such as books, articles and university teaching and research programs. This is very similar to my view of the construction of the biotechnology community in Chapter 3. However, I tend to keep an actor perspective excluding the type of artefacts such as book and written materials. In my conception of the biotechnology community, the actors are the carriers of that knowledge, and that it is the network interaction between the actors that have shaped the biotechnology community. Hence, I conclude that the concept of technological systems can be compare with a set of Chinese boxes. The technological system encompasses the technological fields. Thereby the concept of field is seen as relying and depending on more than one technology system. Especially in the biotechnology industry, we have to conceive that the technology relies on a number of technological systems covering multiple communities of practice. Some of these communities are tightly connected, some are loosely coupled and some seems to have no joint relations. In the technology systems there are competing practice communities, struggling to take command of the dominant design configuration into the field. Also, the technology system consists of collaborative communities of practice that, in the ways Hughes describes it, take responsibility for activities that have to do with the functioning of the system as a whole by being a mediating services across fields, systems, communities and routines. These organizations are service providers, offering services to a variety of actors in the technological fields across systems and communities of practices, changing and forming new organizational routines in new small biotechnology firms and also in well consolidated large firms into a variety of industries.
Incyte Genomics, which switched strategy and developed a technology that is in the intersection between biotectmology and the development of irfformation
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technology, is not only a mediating service provider in both the biotechnology firms but also provides services to the large pharmaceutical firms. By having a deep insight in both the gene sequencing and informations systems, it has been able to set the standard of how firms and research institutions can explore and exploit the outcome of the mapping of the humane genome. By providing its the subscribers with its database system, Incyte Genomics has been able to engage into two technological systems, taking advantage of its Silicon Valley location and penetrating and engaging in multiple communities of practice. This interaction has made it possible to develop a technological platform where the company has become a clone of a biotechnology firm and an IT-firm. 10.5. FOUR ENTREPRENEURIAL ABILITIES IN THE CONSTITUTION OF TECHNOLOGICAL FIELDS I think that the conclusion that stems from this chapter on the constitution of new technological fields concerning the entrepreneurial aspects of utilizing technologies points to the entrepreneurs' abilities to combine and develop new (scientific) knowledge to products, services and processes. Four abilities or functional characteristics of the entrepreneur appear to take a constitutive view on the formation of new technologies. Due to the over-socialized view of this chapter, the economic aspect of technological development has been neglected. 1. The ability to build up and engage in a number communities of practices around specific bodies of knowledge 2. The ability to utilize this knowledge to develop a technological skill base from which new products and services can be developed 3. The ability to transform knowledge located in communities of practice into organizational routines in order to develop a coherent technological competence base 4. The ability to cross and stay in contact with other technological systems to make new discoveries to further exploit and explore the technologies and to build up new competencies and developments To have and develop a further understanding of interrelatedness of technological systems, communities of practice and the development of organizational routines would take a more in-depth analysis of one company specializing in one technological system. I would guess that such a study would be based on ethnographic and anthropological research methods since the researcher has to go native among the natives. I think that Lee (1998) tries to gain this type of insight, but it appears that she is too much a part of the transformation processes inside the firm, which in some parts make it seems like action research. More researchers have to be attracted into the research and investigation of understanding how technological fields, technological systems, communities of practice and organizational routines evolve, co-evolve and are constituted. Welcome on board.
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