Methods for Innovation: The Varying Role of Industrial Research in DSM's Nitrogen Fertilizer Business, 1925-1970

Abstract

In this article the varying methods firms use to innovate are central in an attempt to balance our understanding of innovation processes. Often, research-driven innovation attracts the most attention, obscuring the contributions of other company functions and of external technology. In this article, three key parameters are used to distinguish methods of innovation: scope (of the technological work undertaken), localization (who was involved in the firm) and source of technology (whether internal or external). Firms choose a particular method under the influence of its broader innovation strategy. This framework is used to analyze innovation processes in the fertilizer business of the Dutch chemical company DSM in the period between 1925 and 1970. The example of DSM shows that firms have used different methods of innovation simultaneously, even in high-tech and competitive industries, and well into the twentieth century. To focus only on R&D gives a one-sided view of innovation.

Symbols as cultural expressions of technology diffusion

“…Social anthropology also sought to examine the existence of a relationship between the development of technology and cultural evolution; in effect: could technology have inadvertently contributed to “innovating” and transforming culture? In such instances (Freeze, 2007; Rooij, 2007), innovating culture will refer to the way and manner in which individuals within specific cultural settings (such as the proprietors of SSAs) may conceive and try out new technology innovation prior to adoption; and how technology could change (sometimes detrimentally) everyday social and cultural ways of living. As a result, an emergent challenge of social anthropology (Marcus and Fischer, 1986; Pfaffenberger, 1992; Reynolds, 1983; Schaniel, 1988) is to address not only what appears the indispensable relevance of technology, but how potential changes within culture could be appropriately managed to ensure that technology in the form of “innovation” is consolidated into normal everyday routine.…”