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2012/2013  KAN-CM_B137  Innovating sustainable products and Business Development: The challenges of Unlocking and transforming lock-in

English Title
Innovating sustainable products and Business Development: The challenges of Unlocking and transforming lock-in

Course information
Language English
Exam ECTS 7.5 ECTS
Type Elective
Level Full Degree Master
Duration One Semester
Course period Autumn
Changes in course schedule may occur
Thursday 9.50-12.25, week 37-41, 43-47
Time Table Please see course schedule at e-Campus
Max. participants 65
Study board
Study Board for MSc in Economics and Business Administration
Course coordinator
  • Course Coordinator : Peter Kjær pk.ioa@cbs.dk
    Peter Karnøe - Department of Organization
Administration: Mette Busk Ellekrog(mbe.ioa@cbs.dk)
Main Category of the Course
  • Business Ethics, value based management and CSR
  • Innovation and entrepreneurship
  • Economic and organizational sociology
Last updated on 09-08-2012
Learning objectives
Innovation is related to doing things differently, i.e. to develop modified or new products, processes or services and get them sold on a market. However, theories of innovation often forget how markets come into being, and even if they focus on such terms as ‘emergence of markets’, and ‘user driven innovation’, they analytically downplay the ‘valuation and commoditisation process’ of goods and take competencies of economic actors for given.
This course provides the students with analytical tools for understanding how markets (goods and actors) are created, normalized and locked-in in complex network of interactive relations between corporations, regulators, consumers, social groups, claims to legitimacy, economic tools, scientific instruments, science etc. The concept lock-in/unlocking bring to our attention that ‘markets do not in a text-book manner automatically shift to new products’. Market are not givens but outcomes of organizing dynamics, and the students learn to deal with market development as a strategic achievement subject to many conditions and constraints – knowledge is scarce and contested, resources must be mobilized; and different actors’ actions are grounded on anticipatory commitments and visions for the future. With the help of analytical tools from material sociology of markets and social constructivist theories on markets, students will learn to analyze how new sustainable products and processes are facilitated or hindered by the existing technical infrastructure, the regulative arrangement, the construction of value, and the frames of knowledge used to construct and evaluate a particular market regime.
At the end of the course, the student must be able to:
  • Describe, classify, structure, and combine the concepts, theories, methods, and models of the course.
  • Identify problems and develop relevant solutions for companies working with sustainable innovation
  • Analyse and synthesise concrete problems within sustainable innovation and the making of markets by applying the concepts, theories, methods, and models of the course.
Examination
Individual oral exam based on a miniproject (individual or group)
Individual oral exam based on a miniproject (individual or group):
Type of test Oral with Written Assignment
Marking scale 7-step scale
Second examiner Second internal examiner
Exam period December/January
Aids Please, see the detailed regulations below
Duration 20 Minutes

Examination
In order to achieve grade 12 in the exams, the student needs to show
1) excellent understanding of the different theories of the course, including command of concepts and metatheoretical positioning of the theory,
2) ability to use the theories in an analysis of empirical material and discuss implications for business action,
3) ability to compare, combine and relate different theories to each other.
Course content

  Sustainable technological innovations attempt to reduce carbon (or other) emissions, reduce the use of limited natural resources, and improve work conditions for labour etc. Thus, ‘sustainable innovations’ must prove their net positive economic, social and environmental effect. Successfully developed in new or modified architectures of value they can provide businesses with new development opportunities. The question is how, and under what conditions is this the case?Many companies that enact these concerns and initiate sustainable innovation face the surprising challenge that innovation is not only about making new or improved technologies, but as much about challenging and transforming the lock-in of existing technologies and solutions in our societies. Lock-in as is seen as a gradual normalization of values (what is liked/disliked) and economic value associated with a specific economic domain of activity such as producing and consuming electricity; heating houses; transporting people and goods; producing food, clothes etc.. Lock-in means that ‘markets do not in a text-book manner automatically shift to new products’, and further, lock-in points to the self-reinforcing loops that tend to preserve and favour the existing solutions. Lock-in stems from the heterogeneous of mix of competencies, revenue streams and interests, regulations, standards, tools for calculation and evaluation, that are associated with the production, consumption, regulation and market valuation of specific products.Therefore the challenges for sustainable innovation are not as much lack of science and technologies as it is the inconvenience of transforming existing practices, interests, and revenue streams for individuals, corporations and nations.
 
The course is structured around three overarching themes: The first theme addresses the dynamics of innovation and the making of dominant designs that tend to become ‘normalized’ and locked-in as technoeconomic structures with specific institutional logics and meanings. The second theme addresses how companies initiate Sustainable innovation by addressing ‘concerns’ outside normal market frames. Further, it addresses the dilemma of when to ‘open innovation’ and include other stakeholders, and how they can evaluate the existing lock-in, and the role of business models as a systemic instrument. The third theme addresses the strategies, non-linear processes, allies and tools that the innovator can use to unlock the stakeholders and revenue streams of the existing lock-in and re-assemble stakeholders to economic worth and value.
The course findings are summed up in the final class, which addresses the challenges of establishing new products and re-assemble dimensions of worth, stakeholders, regulations and meanings.  

 

Lock-in as ‘normalization’ of earlier innovations (Classes 1-3)
 
Initiate Sustainable Innovations, new use of Business Models (Classes 4-6)
Unlocking interests and re-assembling valuation
(Class 7-10)
 Course activities include lectures, group exercises and student presentations. The lectures and group exercises will be based on the course literature, while the latter will be based on the students’ work with their mini-projects. The mini-projects typically focus on a particular innovation/technology and/or controversy regarding the development and use of these innovations and employ and discuss the theories and literature presented in the course. In the mini project, students demonstrate ability to work with a particular theory or different theories and concepts from the course literature in relation to a topic and material from real-life. In the end of the course, the students will understand the differences between different theoretical approaches to markets and the implications thereof both in analytical and practical terms.


Teaching methods
Course activities include lectures, group exercises and student presentations. The lectures and group exercises will be based on the course literature, while the latter will be based on the students’ work with their mini-projects. The mini-projects typically focus on a particular innovation/technology and/or controversy regarding the development and use of these innovations and employ and discuss the theories and literature presented in the course. In the mini project, students demonstrate ability to work with a particular theory or different theories and concepts from the course literature in relation to a topic and material from real-life. In the end of the course, the students will understand the differences between different theoretical approaches to markets and the implications thereof both in analytical and practical terms.
Expected literature

 Akrich, M., M. Callon and B. Latour (2002): The key to success in innovation part 1: The art of interessement. International Journal of Innovation Management. 6(2): 187-206. http://esc-proxy.lib.cbs.dk/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=buh&AN=7494825&site=ehost-live
 
Callon, M. (2008), Economic Markets and the Rise of Interactive Agencements: From Prostethetic tom Habilitated Agencies, in Trevor Pinch and R. Swedberg (eds.), Living in a material World, MIT Press, Cambridge Mass.
 
Callon, M. 1998. An essay on framing and overflowing: economic externalities revisited by sociology. In M. Callon (ed.): The Laws of the Markets. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers/The Sociological Review. pp. 244-269.
 
Callon, M. 1991. Techno-economic networks and irreversibility. In J. Law (ed.) A Sociology of Monsters: Essays on Power, Technology and Domination. London: Routledge. pp. 132-161.
 
Callon, M. 1986. The Sociology of and Actor-Network: Then case of the Electric Vehicle. In J. Law et al. Mapping the Dynamics of Science and Technology, London: Routledge, pp. 19-34
 
Callon, M. Cecile Méadel and V. Rabeharisoa 2002, The Economy of qualities. Economy and Society, Vol 31, Number 2, May 2002: 194-217. http://esc-proxy.lib.cbs.dk/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sih&AN=6446268&site=ehost-live
 
Coase, R.1988. The firm, the Market and the Law. In R. Coase: The firm, the Market and the Law. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. 1988. Ch. 1, pp. 1-31.
 
Doganova,L., Eyquem-Reneault M., 2009, ‘What do businessmodel do? Innovation devices in technology entrepreneurship’, Research Policy, 38, (10),
 
Fligstein, N. 2001. Markets as Institutions. In N. Fligstein. The Architecture of Markets. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. pp. 27-44.
 
Garud, R. Arun Kumaraswamy and Peter Karnøe (2010), Path Dependence or Path Creation, in Journal of Management Studies, vol. 47, 4.
 
Garud, R., Gehman, J., & Karnøe, P. 2010. Categorization by association: Nuclear technology and emission-free electriticty. In W. D. Sine, & R. David (Eds.), Research in the Sociology of Work, Vol. 21: 51-93. Bingley: Emerald.
 
Garud, R., S. Jain, and A. Kumaraswamy (2002), “Institutional entrepreneurship in the sponsorship of common technological standards: The case of Sun Microsystems and Java.” Academy Of Management Journal 45(1):196–214.
 
Granovetter, Mark, McQuire Patrick 1998. The making of an industry: electricity in the United States. In M. Callon (ed.): The Laws of the Markets. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers/The Sociological Review. pp. 147-173.
Karnøe, P. & Garud, R. (2001), 'Path Creation as a process of Mindful deviation', in R. Garud & P. Karnøe Path dependence and creation. Lawrence Earlbaum Associates. 
Karnøe, P. (2012), Path Creation: Agency, translation and co-creation of heterogeneous resources during the emergence of the Danish wind turbine cluster,European Planning Studies. To be published May 2012.
Kennedy, M.T., J. Lo, M. Lounsbury (2010), Category currency: The changing value of conformity as a function of ongoing meaning construction, in Greta Hsu, Giacomo Negro, Özgecan Koçak (ed.) Categories in Markets: Origins and Evolution (Research in the Sociology of Organizations, Volume 31), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, pp.369-397
King, Brayden G, and Nicholas A Pearce (2010). “The Contentiousness of Markets: Politics, Social Movements, and Institutional Change in Markets.” Annual Review of Sociology 36(1):249–267.
MacKenzie, D. (2009), Constructing Emissions Markets, in D. MacKenzie (ed.)(2009), Material Markets, How Economic Agents are Constructed, Oxford. pp. 137-177
MacKenzie, D. (2009), Ten Precepts for the Social Science Studies of Finance, in D. MacKenzie (ed.)(2009), Material Markets, How Economic Agents are Constructed, Oxford. pp. 8-37.

Lounsbury, M., M. Ventresca, and P. M. Hirsch. Social movements, field frames and industry emergence: a cultural-political perspective on US recycling. Socio-Economic Review (2003) 1, 71-104. http://esc-proxy.lib.cbs.dk/login?url=http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/soceco/1.1.71
Navis, C, and MA Glynn. (2010). “How New Market Categories Emerge: Temporal Dynamics of Legitimacy, Identity, and Entrepreneurship in Satellite Radio, 1990–2005.” Administrative Science Quarterly.
 
Rao, H, and S Giorgi. (2006). “Code Breaking: How Entrepreneurs Exploit Cultural Logics to Generate Institutional Change.” Research in Organizational Behavior 27:269–304.
 
Stark, D. (2009), The Sense of Dissonance, Princeton, pp. 1-35

Tidd, J. et al. 1997. Managing Innovation – Integrating Technological, Market and Organizational Change. 2nd ed. Chichester: John Wiley. Ch. 2, 7  pp. 38-63, 161- 195
 
Unruh, C.G., (2002), Escaping carbon lock-in, Energy Policy, 30, 317-325.
 
Unruh, C.G., (2000), Understanding carbon lock-in, Energy Policy 28, 817-830.
 
Utterback, James. 1996. Mastering the Dynamics of Innovation, HBS Press. Chapter 2-3.
 
Van de Ven et al (1999), The innovation Journey, Oxford. Chapter 2, pp. 21-39
 
Last updated on 09-08-2012