The Innovation And Co-evolution Of Technologies And Society

Research on the relationship between technologies and society has been strongly influenced by both perspectives of Innovation Studies and The Social Studies of Technology.There have been two popular and but contrastory viewpoints about the relationship between technologies and society:Technological Determinism and Social Determinism.To some extent,it is no doubt that both Determinisms point to some aspects of the relationship between technologies and society.However,due to extremely complexity of this relationship,it is possible to find that both views have in general complementary shortcomings and are quite simplistic,no matter whether the issue is do 'technologies decide society' or 'societies decide technology'.This dissertation adopts an interdisciplinary and integrated approach which focuses on the 'co-evolution' and 'co-construction' of technologies and society which brings together both perspectives mentioned above and combines with other disciplines such as Institution Theory,The History of Technologies,and Evolutionary Economics etc.in a multi-dimensional way in order to address the shortcomings of each,while drawing on the strengths of both and going beyond them.This paper,on the one hand, introduces the concept of Social Innovation,constructs a theoretical framework drawing on the co-evolution of technologies and society,and offers a hypothesis about the innovative dynamics of social development;exploring innovation as a complex process it examines empirically three cases of Galanz microwave oven,TD-SCDMA and e-health using the perspectives of management,sociology and co-evolution respectively in order to evaluate the contribution of each of these theoriesThe theoretical values of the dissertation lie in not just extending technological innovation research from economic management to sociology,but developing a new theory,a new understanding and new explanation for technological innovation and its evaluation process based on several cases studies.The practical implications of the dissertation consist in putting forward some suggestions for strategy and policy in terms of technological innovation and social development issues as exemplary decision references for Chinese companies and government.In brief,the following issues are used to structure the thesis.Firstly,to outline the theories of technological innovation and rethink its limitations,Chapter 2 mapped and rethought the primary achievement of technological innovation theory from both aspects of continuities and discontinuities, and linear and non- linear disciplines of technological innovation evolution.On the one hand,technological evolution presents the unification of continuities and discontinuities and complies with the periodic law of the spiral loop.With ever-deeper research,on the other hand,co-evolution is emerging as an important theme because academic communities realized the limitation of the linear model,and the non-linear feature and complexity of technological innovation.In essence,technological evolution is not just a technical issue,but requires an understanding of the co-evolution of technologies and society.Secondly,the basic patterns,evolutional mechanisms and determinants based on the case studies of Galanz enterprise are explored.First of all,chapter 3 constructed the primary models of it after clarifying the basic concepts of the disruptive innovation;then it explores further the influencing factors and evolutional mechanisms of disruptive innovation taking Galanz as an example.Disruptive innovation theory makes clear that disruptive innovation is not only a new direction in the shape of technical innovation,but also a new channel of market demand as well as new strategy for entrant enterprise growth.Case analysis of Galanz indicates that disruptive innovation is obviously a kind of the dynamic process of co-evolution of technologies,market and organizations.In a word,disruptive innovation is one of strategic choice to promote the development of entrant enterprises and developing countries.Thirdly,to reveal the dynamic mechanism and translation process of technological innovation,which combine new sociology of technology with the case of TD-SCDMA,Chapter 4 outlined and reviewed three approaches of 'new sociology of technology' and the contributions of them for technological innovation theories; then explored the dynamic mechanism and translation process of technological innovation from the perspective of Actors-Network Theory(ANT)with the case of the third generation mobile communications standard TD-SCDMA in which China holds its own intellectual property rights.Beyond the traditional innovation theories and sociology,the Social Studies of Technology,especially ANT,has made the brand-new approach for technological innovation research,claimed that there are no specific boundaries and co-evolution relationship between technologies and society. The case research of TD-SCDMA revealed that technological innovations have the nature of social embeddedness,and the problem of translation is the key point of technological evolution,and the shape of heterogeneous actors networks is an essential elements of technological innovation success.Fourthly,to construct the theory frame of co-evolution between technologies and society that is applied for analyzing e-health technology and innovation.Chapter 5 introduced socio-technical systems approach,and raised a multi-level analysis model: socio-technical niche,regime and landscape,and explored the dynamic mechanism of co-evolution between technologies and society.Drawing on the definition and significance of E-health,Chapter 6 not only explored mainly the determinants of e-health,and the co-evolution relationship between e-heath and society,but also puts forward some revelatory suggestions for Chinese e-health development.Lastly,to make a hypothesis about innovative dynamics of social development after introducing the conception of social innovation,chapter 7 offers the concept of social innovation,analyzes its significance and process in the perspective of STS(science,technology and society).In the next place,innovation has been classified into 'technological innovation' and 'social innovation'.Chapter 7 also offers a hypothesis about innovative dynamics of social development that technological innovation and social innovation are two big powers of social development.The synergism of Innovation of Technologies and society drives the transformation of human society from pre-industry,industry to post-industry society.The social transformation of contemporary China has some special characteristics which include fast-stepping development,coexists of the many kinds of form of society as well as lagging behind,superimposition,gradual advance,independence and so on. There are unique difficult problems in the three aspects of artifacts,institution and culture.The countermeasure lies in the coordination of the development of technological and social innovation,particularly constructing institutional and cultural innovation.