This paper explores the role of intermediaries in the development and appropriation of new technologies. We focus on intermediaries that facilitate user innovation, and the linking of user innovation into supply side activities. We review findings on intermediaries in some of our studies and other available literature to build a framework to explore of how intermediaries work in making innovation happen. We make sense of these processes by taking a long-term view of the dynamics of technology and market development using the social learning in technological innovation (SLTI) framework. Our primary concern is with innovation intermediaries and their core roles of configuring, facilitating and brokering technologies, uses and relationships in uncertain and emerging markets. We show the range of positions and influence they have along the supply-use axis in a number of different innovation contexts, and how they are able to bridge the user-developer innovation domains. Equipped with these insights, we explore in more depth how intermediaries affect the shape of new information and communication technologies and the importance of identifying and nurturing the user-side intermediaries that are crucial to innovation success.

Sharing research resources of different kinds, in new ways, and on an increasing scale, is a central element of the unfolding e-Research vision. Web 2.0 is seen as providing the technical platform to enable these new forms of scholarly communications. We report findings from a study of the use of Web 2.0 services by UK researchers and their use in novel forms of scholarly communication. We document the contours of adoption, the barriers and enablers, and the dynamics of innovation in Web services and scholarly practices. We conclude by considering the steps that different stakeholders might take to encourage greater experimentation and uptake.

IntroductionThis chapter reflects critically upon how a substantial body of writings in technology studies and user-oriented computing have sought to conceptualize design -and their tacit and explicit presumptions about what is wrong with technology design/development processes as currently practised. 1 Many of these analyses share a paradoxical view of design: presenting on the one hand a rather heroic view of design as successfully embedding a range of explicit purposes and implicit values (a view we refer to as the 'design fallacy'), while on the other hand demonizing design practices and outcomes. The chapter argues that this account is inadequate and derives from a flawed 'design-centred' perspective -that focuses narrowly on particular design episodes and conceives these as leading to finished solutions to social/ organizational needs.The chapter presents an alternative view of the role of design in the development of new technologies, particularly in relation to new information and communication technologies (ICTs) that have emerged in the course of the European Social Learning in Multimedia (SLIM) research project. 2 A social learning perspective is outlined that sees design outcomes/supplier offerings as inevitably unfinished in relation to complex heterogeneous and evolving user requirements. Further innovation takes place as artefacts are implemented and used. To be used and useful, ICT artefacts must be 'domesticated' and become embedded in broader systems of culture and information practices. In this process, artefacts are often reinvented and further elaborated ('innofusion').The social learning perspective (Rip et al. 1995) analyses particular design episodes as located within longer-term processes of innovation across multiple cycles of technology design and implementation. It offers an evolutionary model of how societal requirements and technological capabilities might be coupled together. Although concepts of evolution and of learning may convey a sense of smooth and seamless interaction, our analysis points to the complex and often difficult interaction between them, offering an analytical framework that is more open (i) to the necessarily

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The aim of this study was to explore the benefits of information and communication technologies (ICT)-based services for informal carers and paid assistants of older people living in the community. We cross-case analysed the effects of twelve initiatives in the EU, the USA and Canada, based on their individual analysis documented through interviews with promoters and a literature review. We carried out the cross-case analysis following a variables-oriented strategy on seven dimensions of impact at micro-, meso- and macro-levels: the quality of life of informal carers and paid assistants, quality of life of care recipients, quality of care, care efficiency and sustainability, acceptability, and infrastructure and accessibility. ICT-based services for informal carers and paid assistants improve the quality of life of older people and their carers and access to qualified care. They also generate savings which contribute to the sustainability of the care systems. These findings constitute a first look at the benefits of the use of ICT-based services for informal carers and paid assistants. Nevertheless, more research using experimental methods is needed to demonstrate the impact of these ICT-based services at meso- and macro-levels. This would help to support policy-makers to deploy these technologies for long-term care delivery.