Initial idea or technical development → analysis of demands and resources → preference for
strategic options for feasible design → implementation program → production/policy
implementation → evaluation of market or policy performance
Science aims to reveal testable, universal and objective explanations and
predictions of our universe
Business perspectives are based on demonstrable and profitable
consumer acceptance
Policy aims to achieve societal goals (supported and legitimated by
political appreciation)
Learning and repeated critical evaluation connects science and ‘lean
entrepreneurship’
- Too much early investment in business plans and production systems may lead to incorrect
and unprofitable investments → faster and repeated evaluation (involve also consumer
wishes and product appreciation)
In each step of the innovation process, the exchange of information is crucial for finally obtaining
reliable advice
Loop model
- Balance between the two
opposite domains can vary in the
different phases
- Initial phase (problem definition):
problem demand or supply
driven?
- Stakeholders: all of which can
play roles in the accomplishment
of innovation → characteristics:
• Their interest in the
development of the
innovation (social,
financial, scientific)
• Power (political,
institutional, financial)
Natural person: responsible for economic activities with all
personal properties
Legal person: non-living entity which by law has specific rights,
protections, and sometimes restricted, responsibilities and
liabilities
Potential bottlenecks: detecting a market, finding resources,
applying an implementation strategy
Business plan (4 step)
1. Value proposition: describes the benefit for the future customer
, 2. Market description
3. Tools to reach the market
4. Calculate if there is a financial balance between costs
and revenues → determine earning capacity
Costs and benefits analysis can be a major obstacle in policy
science advising
Principles of good scientific research → CUDOS: communism, universalism disinterestedness,
organized scepticism
- Universities now: codes of conduct for scientific practice
- Science represents an intrinsic, curiosity-driven cultural value
- Knowledge economy: human capital of knowledge and education can be treated as an
educational, innovative and intellectual business product/service/asset with a high return
value
Problem of knowledge economy: research is only aided in specific sectors (agriculture, food, creative
industry, energy, health, water, life sciences) by the government
- Freedom of scientist to fulfil his or her curiosity?
- Major scientific breakthroughs (sometimes with large consequences) have occurred as the
unexpected results of basic research
Chapter 2 Technology
Innovation: a new idea or method that is introduced in the way that something is done or made →
something newly introduced
- Technological innovations: innovations based on new or modified technologies
- Innovations require entrepreneurship: developing new ideas or artefacts, taking risks,
convincing others and bringing people together to act (and concerns business and profit)
Technology requires publications and papers (e.g. on designs, on technical demands), and scientists
develop certain technologies for experiments and are sometimes involved in application-oriented
sciences
Technology: the activity or study of using scientific knowledge for practical purposes in industry,
medicine, farming, business etc → OR a particular activity that requires scientific method and
knowledge
- Goal-oriented and systematic development and application of scientific knowledge to solve
practical (societal) problems in an efficient way
- Technology bridges science and society
- Technology is more than applied science, because upgrading and standardising a technology
requires specific types of knowledge
- Science is an important and crucial building block in technology, but the scientific knowledge
must be integrated with other elements
- Science is dependent on technology → facilitates scientific research
- Technology is powerful, because:
• It is crucial for export, innovation and employment in NL
• Companies finance huge R&D programs
• Technology is influential: it may lead to prosperity and freedom, and a better ability
to control and exploit nature
• Technological advances make our lives more comfortable
, • Negative effects on human society: effects on democracy, freedom or the future of
the Earth
- Technology is not autonomous
- Technology may shape our identities: invasive technology (patient still the same after DBS
treatment?), dilemmas at societal level that may change our culture and economy
Four relationships between humans and technology:
1. Humans use technology to exploit the world directly (e.g. glasses, car)
• Technologies are part of physical functioning
2. Humans use technology to exploit the world indirectly (e.g. X-ray picture, heart rhythm
device)
• More interpretation is needed: we have to understand the meaning of the picture or
device in order to understand our bodies
• Technology helps to interpret ourselves or the world around us
3. Technology is a part of the context and the environment
• We use technology to interact (e.g. CD player)
4. Technology exists in the background of our lives (e.g. noises, light signals from certain
technological products)
Levels of innovation (technological levels):
- Microlevel: level closest to innovation → innovation niche
• New ideas for innovations develop
• Researchers and technologists play a key role
• Concept: an idea that is linked to an artefact → the idea (e.g. its practical use)
concerns the meaning of the artefact (which has a technological character)
- Mesolevel: level of the institution or sectors and its related actors
• Socio-technological system: level involves closely connected societal and
technological elements
▪ Networks function according to certain conventions, routines and rules (e.g.
culture of a company, societal norms, expectations, etc)
▪ Regime: coherent combination of material, cognitive, social elements and
conventions → gives the system a certain stability
▪ Major scientific developments influence scientists who participate in a given
regime, and radical market developments influence the market parties in the
regime
- Macrolevel: level of society, with its social, cultural, material and economic characteristics
• Stands for the cultural and physical characteristics of society, including certain ideas,
ideologies and views (e.g. freedom), scientific paradigms, technological practises and
standards, political basic ideas (e.g. democracy), governance, economic principles
and climate and geology
• Factors change slowly
Technology trajectory: e.g. TVs with new types of screens
- Radical innovations often take place outside existing technological trajectories
- Radical change: occurs only if a regime is heavily challenged (by e.g. radical technological
inventions or dramatic political developments)
- Co-creation: involves a cooperative process of creation, incorporating
scientists/technologists and others and resulting in the creation of products
, - Co-evolution: the interactive progress of several societal demands and scientific-
technological trajectories during the long-term development of a technology
Innovation is a step-wise process: idea to concept → pilots related to artefacts, products and
processes → company capable of producing and selling to a market → satisfied society including
various societal groups, governments and citizens
Stages of innovation
1. Fundamental research: technology is flexible, and there is much variation
• Creativity, wildness and freedom
• Niche level
2. Technological research: technological development
• The process of meaning attachment is crucial
3. Product development: technology is connected to marketing, general strategies,
organisational issues and often the demands of retailers, suppliers and end users
• Technology’s flexibility will be reduced
4. Market introduction
5. Societal use: technology is connected to specific rules, societal parties, branding, treatments
or infrastructure
• Technology’s flexibility is lost additionally
• After introduction and implementation in society certain changes are still possible →
relates to meaning or appreciation of the technology
Technology push: technology requires and drives societal
applications and demands
- No one in society asked for these products
- Not mutually exclusive with market demand → once
a technology push base develops, a demand pull can
follow
Market demand: market asks for and drives technological
innovations (e.g. society can demand products that are
more user-friendly, safe or environmentally friendly
Feedback mechanisms occur in several stages of
technological developments
Technology can be stimulated, but it also has to
overcome barriers, which may lead it to develop
in new and unexpected directions → process of
variation and selection
Technology can inhibit development, because it
is connected to certain trajectories,
conventions, habits, and financial and
production schemes
Locked in: a situation in which technology development is limited to a few paths
- Technological trajectories have several internal dependencies (such as standards regarding
safety, feasibility and responsibility)
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