Elsevier

Research Policy

Volume 14, Issue 2, April 1985, Pages 61-82
Research Policy

Technological guideposts and innovation avenues

https://doi.org/10.1016/0048-7333(85)90015-0Get rights and content

Abstract

This paper presents an integrative view of innovation processes based on a theory of systems developed by the author over the past few years. In its essence, one of the most important clues to the origin of innovations is to be found in the fact that the performance of every technology depends upon its size and structure. Specifically, as a technology is continuously made to become larger or smaller, the relationship between its size and structural requirements changes, which in turn, severely limits the scope of its further evolution. Thus the origin of a wide variety of innovations lies in learning to overcome the constraints that arise from the process of scaling the technology under consideration. In short, technical progress is best characterized as a process of learning by scaling.

These considerations in turn point to a trilogy of innovations corresponding to three main types of technological constraints: structural innovations that arise from a process of differential growth whereby the parts and the whole of a system do not grow at the same rate: material innovations involving a change in the construction stuff; and systems innovations that arise from the integration of two or more symbiotic technologies in an attempt to simplify the outline of the overall structure. The proposed trilogy is shown to account for the emergence of various techniques including the so-called revolutionary innovations in a variety of fields.

The theory is developed and illustrated through three case studies of technical progress in the aircraft, farm tractor, and computer industries. The results of our investigation further reveal that the process of innovation is best conceived in terms of a certain topography of technological evolution. Specifically, we find that technical progress is invariably characterized by the existence of what may be called technological guideposts and innovation avenues that lay out certain definite paths of development. Chance determines which amongst many technological guideposts will be chosen in the course of development. Once the development is well along a certain innovation avenue. necessity prevails until another point connecting other technological guideposts and innovation avenues is reached. This brings chance back to the fore and the process continues. In sum, the process of technological evolution is determined by the interplay of chance and necessity rather than one at the exclusion of the other.

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