A Classification of the Innovation Process Precipitated by the Rise of Deep-Threat Multi-Use Technologies

• In Event: Infrastructures of Innovation

Abstract

The rise of multi-use innovations from diverse domains with high deep-threat security potential has been concerning the national security sector. A new classification of innovation types that highlights changing dynamics within canonical STS dimensions associated with innovation is presented here. Rooted in the concept that innovation is a combinatorial process, the classification scheme attributes the recent rapid increase in innovations to the growing base of accumulated and increasingly accessible phenomena (explanations of nature) and technologies (embodiment of a use of phenomena for a purpose) across all domains. Meanwhile, diminished federal funding and lower tolerance of failure have hindered the capacity of federal R&D institutions to maintain competences across these domains. From a social perspective, new and emerging structural features, such as the supplanting of the centrality of institutions by networks of individuals, has encouraged different modes of individual participation in the innovation process. This allows for unique methods of knowledge incorporation and a variety of thought processes in the ideation phase. The network’s absorptive capacity – its dynamic capability to search, acquire, assimilate and transform knowledge needed to support the innovation process – is seen to be central to its success. These dynamics have generated this new classification of innovation types, while suggesting the need for the federal R&D innovation portfolio to include the same innovation process to address the rapid increase in deep-threat, multi-use technologies.

Authors

• Jessica Glicken Turnley, Galisteo Consulting Group, Inc.

• Diana Bull, Sandia National Laboratories

• Sharon Deland, Sandia National Laboratories

• Jeff Tsao, Sandia National Laboratories