DISSERTATION

Title: “Collective Innovation: Changing Technology, Practice and Organization across Fields”

Committee: Andrew Abbott (chair), Karin Knorr Cetina, James Evans and Gary Herrigel

In my dissertation, I investigate internal and external dynamics of collective innovation. By internal collective innovation process, I refer to the coordination of action among stakeholders from different organizations who take part in the development and the promotion of an innovation. External collective innovation relates to the efforts of innovators who work with lead users in an effort to transfer the innovation to mainstream users.

To study collective innovation, I investigate the development of grid computing. My study integrates multiple methods that include interviews with 57 innovators and adopters from scientific and commercial communities, approximately 200 hours of observations of discussions at seven grid conferences, and analysis of archives of innovator and grid adopting organizations.

Based on these data, I develop a theoretical framework that refines the garbage can theory, taking it to the context of distributed decisions in different professional communities. Using this framework, I identify a new mechanism of radical change that is fundamentally different from institutional approaches in that it highlights the ability of established actors to depart from the dominant paradigm in their community and to form an entirely new field. My theoretical model on external collective innovation highlights three types of cognitive and cultural gaps that confront innovators as they facilitate the transfer of an innovation into new user communities. Building on a framework that was originally developed in social studies of science and technology, and using mixed qualitative data, I reveal strategies, or bridges actors develop to overcome gaps and bolster the innovation diffusion potential.

By identifying the mechanisms of coordination and engagement, this research enriches the study of institutional theory and the literature on diffusion of innovation that have, to date, been limited to the study of innovation dynamics within a single social system. My dissertation further broadens social network theory by specifying cognitive and cultural factors that limit the ability of brokers to transfer knowledge, as well as the mechanisms that enable them to extend their reach.