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Technological Communities and
Networks

Research has shown that technological evolution in key application areas

for a competitive future increasingly requires a sustained focus on the
‘invisible hands’ of technological communities of actors and their variegated
networks. This book seeks to look at what is distinctive about these commu-
nities, how they shape a broad range of new computer-based technologies
and why they are destined to gain increased importance in explaining how
these new technologies emerge.
Through analysing the structure of a broad range of existing technological
communities and networks, Assimakopoulos argues that it is from collective
community-based efforts rather than individual work that technological
revolutions spring. Such an argument offers an implied critique of existing
organisational and business models.
This book will be of great interest to research and development managers,
ICT engineers and policy makers, as well as postgraduate researchers in
knowledge management, technology policy, sociology, the economics of
innovation and the history of science and technology.

Dimitris G. Assimakopoulos is Professor of Information Systems, Associate

Dean of Research and Director of the Doctoral Program at the Grenoble
Ecole de Management, France.
Routledge Advances in Management and
Business Studies

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Yves Frédéric Livian and John G. Burgoyne

2 Marketing Apocalypse
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Edited by Stephen Brown, Jim Bell and David Carson

3 Relationship Marketing in Professional Services

A study of agency–client dynamics in the advertising sector
Aino Halinen

4 Job Design and Technology

Taylorism vs anti-Taylorism
Hans D. Pruijt

5 Regulation and Organisations

International perspectives
Edited by Glenn Morgan and Lars Engwall

6 Information Technology, Organisations and People

Transformations in the UK retail financial services sector
Jeff Watkins

7 HRM, Technical Workers and the Multinational Corporation

Patrick McGovern

8 The Internationalization of Small to Medium Enterprises

The Interstratos project
Edited by Rik Donckels, Antti Haahti and Graham Hall

9 Neo-Industrial Organising
Renewal by action and knowledge formation in a project-intensive economy
Rolf A. Lundin, Hans Wirdenius, Eskil Ekstedt and Anders Soderholm

10 Perspectives on Public Relations Research

Edited by Danny Moss, Dejan Vercic and Gary Warnaby
11 Resources, Technology and Strategy
Edited by Nicolai J. Foss and Paul L. Robertson

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Clare Hall, Colin Scott and Christopher Hood

13 Rethinking Public Relations

The spin and the substance
Kevin Moloney

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Penny West

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Andrew Crane

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The organization’s most valuable assets
A. Bounfour

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A critique of the discourse of strategic management
Pete Thomas

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James Kelly and John Gennard

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Theory and practice in international perspective
Stephen Osborne

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Silent voices
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Gopal K. Kanji

22 Innovation as Strategic Reflexivity

Edited by Jon Sundbo and Lars Fuglsang

23 The Foundations of Management Knowledge

Edited by Paul Jeffcutt

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Professionals and managerial change
Edited by Jim Barry, Mike Dent and Maggie O’Neill
25 Managing Technological Development
Hakan Hakansson and Alexandra Waluszewski

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Carol Boyd

27 Business, Government and Sustainable Development

Gerard Keijzers

28 Strategic Management and Online Selling

Creating competitive advantage with intangible web goods
Susanne Royer

29 Female Entrepreneurship
Implications for education, training and policy
Edited by Nancy M. Carter, Colette Henry, Barra Ó Cinnéide and Kate Johnston

30 Managerial Competence within the Hospitality and Tourism Service Industries

Global cultural contextual analysis
John Saee

31 Innovation Diffusion in the New Economy

The tacit component
Barbara Jones and Bob Miller

32 Technological Communities and Networks

Triggers and drivers for innovation
Dimitris G. Assimakopoulos
Technological Communities
and Networks
Triggers and drivers for innovation

Dimitris G. Assimakopoulos
First published 2007
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2007 Dimitris G. Assimakopoulos
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2007.
“To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s
collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.”
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Assimakopoulos, Dimitris G.
Technological communities and networks: triggers and drivers for
innovation / Dimitris G. Assimakopoulos.
p. cm. – (Routledge advances in management and business studies)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Technological innovations. 2. Diffusion of innovations. 3. Social networks.
I. Title.

HC79.T4A817 2007
338⬘.064–dc22 2006027004

ISBN 0–203–41746–1 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN10: 0–415–33480–2 (hbk)

ISBN10: 0–203–41746–1 (ebk)

ISBN13: 978–0–415–33480–8 (hbk)

ISBN13: 978–0–203–41746–1 (ebk)
To Eleana, Floriane and Eleni-Anastasia:
three generations of women
Contents

List of figures xi
List of graphs xiii
List of tables xv
List of abbreviations and acronyms xvii
Prologue and acknowledgements xix

1 Introduction 1

2 Communities as the social locus of knowledge-intensive

technological practice 14

3 Collaboration networks as the social locus of

knowledge-intensive technological innovation 33

4 Ptolemaic views of personal networks in cross-national

innovation 51

5 An astronomer’s view of the origins of a national GIS

community 91

6 A regional semiconductor community and academic

entrepreneurship in Silicon Valley 130

7 Technological communities and networks: new frontiers

for knowledge-intensive innovation 184

Appendix: SNA concepts and metrics 200

Glossary of SNA terminology 203
References 205
Author index 219
Subject index 223
Figures

2.1 Characteristics of scientific knowledge and of scientific

communities at different stages of the S-shaped logistic curve 22
2.2 Technological community and basic elements of its source
concept of technological tradition of practice 27
2.3 Emergence of a new GIS community from existing
technological communities and traditions of practice 30
3.1 Five generations of models describing innovation processes 34
3.2 A weak tie between the actors A and B 48
4.1 E2S project network 67
4.2 Formal vs. informal links for 10 Esprit RTD projects 84
5.1 The cumulative number of GIS teams according to the
four-stage model of the Greek GIS community from 1982
to 1994–5 104
5.2a The emergence of the Greek GIS community with respect
to GIS software adoption in stage II, innovators, 1982–5 104
5.2b The emergence of the Greek GIS community with respect
to GIS software adoption in stage III, early adopters, 1986–9 105
5.2c The emergence of the Greek GIS community with respect to
GIS software adoption in stage IV, early majority, 1990–4/5 106
5.3 GIS linkages of the GIS teams forming the Greek GIS
community 108
5.4 The distribution of linkages within the Greek GIS community 110
5.5 The list of 31 cliques of the Greek GIS community 111
5.6 Cohesive subgroup of the Greek GIS community based on
the ranking of teams who are members of more than
10 per cent of cliques of three 112
5.7 Centrality measures (degree, closeness, betweenness
and flow betweenness) for the 51 teams who form the
Greek GIS community 113
6.1 Cumulative number of firms in SV’s semiconductor
community, 1960–86 151
6.2 Frequency of founded firms by professors of EE/CS at
UCB and Stanford 159
xii Figures
6.3 Frequency of directed firms by professors of EE/CS at UCB
and Stanford 164
6.4 Frequency of advised firms by professors of EE/CS at UCB
and Stanford 174
6.5 Stanford-advised firms – hierarchical clustering of cliques 175
6.6 UCB-advised firms – hierarchical clustering of cliques 176
7.1 A socio-technical pyramid for investigating the concept of
a technological community and related tradition of practice 198
Graphs

4.1 Amulet2 personal networks 53

4.2 Delphi personal networks 57
4.3 Improve personal networks 61
4.4 Fires personal networks 64
4.5 E2S personal networks 68
4.6 Timely personal networks 70
4.7 Flacscom personal networks 73
4.8 Pepse personal networks 77
4.9 Piper personal networks 79
4.10 Imprimatur personal networks 81
4.11 A country-based network analysis of links for 10 RTD projects 88
5.1 Institutional groups of the 51 teams which form the Greek
GIS community based on the Euclidian distances between
them 116
5.2 Zooming in on the core of the Greek GIS community 117
5.3 Teams which belong in central and local government and
utilities organisations based on the Euclidian distances
between them 119
5.4 Academic teams based on the Euclidian distances between
them 120
5.5 Teams which belong in private sector firms based on the
Euclidian distances between them 121
5.6 Teams which belong in government (boxes) and private sector
(diamonds) based on the Euclidian distances between them 122
5.7 Teams which belong in government (boxes) and academia
(circles) based on the Euclidian distances between them 122
5.8 Teams which belong in academia (circles) and private sector
(diamonds) based on the Euclidian distances between them 123
5.9 Disciplinary backgrounds of the 51 teams which form the
Greek GIS community based on the Euclidian distances
between them 124
5.10 Teams which share a surveying engineering disciplinary
background based on the Euclidian distances between them 126
xiv Graphs
5.11 Teams which share a spatial planning disciplinary
background based on the Euclidian distances between them 126
5.12 Teams which share the ‘other’ disciplinary backgrounds
based on the Euclidian distances between them 127
6.1 SEMI founders, 1957–86 136
6.2 SEMI founders’ main components (N > 9) 138
6.3 SEMI founders’ main component (N = 22) – 1 mode 138
6.4 SEMI founders’ main component (N = 22, M = 8) – 2 mode 139
6.5 SEMI founders’ previous firms, 1957–86 140
6.6 SEMI founders’ previous firms – principal component analysis 141
6.7 SEMI founders’ previous firms – main component 143
6.8 SEMI semiconductor community, 1947–60 144
6.9 SEMI semiconductor community, 1947–65 145
6.10 SEMI semiconductor community, 1947–70 146
6.11 SEMI semiconductor community, 1947–75 148
6.12 SEMI semiconductor community, 1947–80 149
6.13 SEMI semiconductor community, 1947–86 150
6.14 Stanford EE/CS professors by firms founded 157
6.15 UCB EE/CS professors by firms founded 158
6.16 Stanford-founded firms 160
6.17 UCB-founded firms 161
6.18 Stanford directors by firms 162
6.19 UCB directors by firms 163
6.20 Stanford directors’ firms 165
6.21 UCB directors’ firms 166
6.22 Stanford advisors by firms 168
6.23 UCB advisors by firms 169
6.24 Stanford advisors’ firms 170
6.25 UCB advisors’ firms 171
6.26 Stanford advisors 172
6.27 UCB advisors 173
6.28 Stanford and UCB advisors by firms 179
6.29 Stanford and UCB advisors 180
Tables

3.1 Summary of changes in Esprit and IST programmes from

the early 1980s to the early 2000s 41
3.2 Dynamic capabilities in moderately dynamic and
high-velocity markets 45
4.1 Amulet2 project network – partner organisations by
country 54
4.2 Analysis of links between developed and less favoured
(D–LF) countries 86
4.3 Internal vs. external links for 10 RTD projects 88
5.1 Groups of institutions and GIS teams forming the Greek
GIS community in 1994–5 94
5.2 Functional components/institutional groups that make up
the Greek GIS community 97
5.3 GIS technology components and complementary areas of
interest for the institutional ‘triple helix’ of the Greek GIS
community 99
5.4 Four stages in the emergence of the Greek GIS community
and cumulative number of GIS teams 100
5.5 Percentage of teams in the inner, middle and outer circles
of the Greek GIS community according to the main
institutional groups 118
5.6 Percentage of teams in the inner, middle and outer circles
of the Greek GIS community according to the main
disciplinary groups 125
6.1 Top 20 centrality scores of SEMI founders 137
6.2 Top 20 centrality scores of SEMI founders’ previous firms 142
6.3 Centrality ranking of SV’s semiconductor firms, 1947–60 144
6.4 Centrality ranking of SV’s semiconductor firms, 1947–65 145
6.5 Centrality ranking of SV’s semiconductor firms, 1947–70 146
6.6 Centrality ranking of SV’s semiconductor firms, 1947–75 148
6.7 Centrality ranking of SV’s semiconductor firms, 1947–80 149
6.8 Centrality ranking of SV’s semiconductor firms, 1947–86 150
xvi Tables
6.9 Density of founder, director and advisor networks at UCB
and Stanford 177
6.10 Density of founded, directed and advised firms’ networks
at UCB and Stanford 177
6.11 E-I index of founder, director and advisor networks of
EE/CS professors at UCB and Stanford 177
Abbreviations and acronyms

ALCS Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society

APM Architecture Projects Management
ARM Advanced RISC Machines
AUT Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
BAe British Aerospace Defence
BP British Petroleum
CAD computer-aided design
CAE computer-aided engineering
CalTech California Institute of Technology
CAM computer-aided manufacturing
CFD computational fluid dynamics
CoP community of practice
CMR Christian Michelsen Research
DERA Defence Evaluation Research Agency
EE/CS electrical engineering/computer science
EC European Commission
EU European Union
Esprit European Strategic Programme for Research in Information
Technologies
ESRI Environmental Systems Research Institute
FoRTH Foundation for Research and Technology Hellas
GIS geographic information systems
HP Hewlett-Packard
HPC high-performance computing
IC integrated circuit
ICT information and communication technologies
IST information society technologies
MIT Massachusetts Institute of Technology
NoP network of practice
NTUA National Technical University of Athens
RTD research and technological development
SE spectroscopic ellipsometry
SEMI Semiconductor Equipment and Materials International
xviii Abbreviations and acronyms
SET secure electronic transaction
SME small and medium-sized enterprise
STS science and technology studies
SNA social network analysis
SV Silicon Valley
TAP Telematics Applications Programme
UCB University of California, Berkeley
Prologue and acknowledgements

This book is the outcome of the academic and professional communities and
networks that I have belonged to and benefited from during the past decade
or so. It owes a great debt to many people and institutions to whom I owe
acknowledgements for providing inspiration and support through the three
sets of research studies I carried out with the help of various collaborators in
the European Union and the United States from the early 1990s onwards.
A huge debt is owed to the very many people in private and public organ-
isations, universities and government agencies who unselfishly contributed
their time, wealth of ideas and insights, which enriched the overall discussion.
The list is too long to reproduce here, though the ideas developed in the
book mainly stem from their experiences. The responsibility for the inter-
pretation is entirely my own and should not be attributed to any particular
individual or participating/sponsoring organisation.
With respect to my doctoral research relating to the Greek GIS commu-
nity, my PhD supervisor and mentor Professor Ian Masser and his team,
including Professor Heather Campbell and Dr Max Craglia, in the Depart-
ment of Town and Regional Planning at the University of Sheffield in the
United Kingdom, deserve special thanks for providing ample guidance and
enthusiasm about my research from 1992 to 1997. In this connection, I must
also acknowledge the financial support provided for two years by an
individual ‘Marie Curie’ doctoral fellowship of the European Commission’s
Directorate General for Science, Research and Development. Outside
Sheffield, thanks are due to Professor Nikos Polydorides and his team at the
University of Patras in Greece, as well as to key members of the Greek GIS
community, including, Dr Thanos Doganis, Mr Adonis Kontos, Dr Poulikos
Prastacos, Dr George Halaris, Dr Marinos Kavouras, Mr Dimitris Siorris
and Mr Michael Salahoris, who helped to compile my initial list of contacts
and facilitate this research.
With respect to my postdoctoral research relating to the informal networks
of main UK contractors in Esprit, I would like to express my appreciation
and gratitude to Professor Stuart Macdonald at the Sheffield University
Management School (SUMS) who had the initial idea for this research and
shared with patience and good humour a lot of the vagaries associated with
xx Prologue and acknowledgements
fieldwork in the United Kingdom and the European Union. In this connec-
tion, I must also acknowledge the financial support received for two years
from the UK Economic and Social Research Council through its European
Context of Science Policy programme, and for one year from the EC’s Esprit
programme, Analysis of Socio-Economic Consequences action line, funded
by DG Information Society Technologies. Dr Rebecca Piekkari from SUMS
and Dr Peter Gustavsson from Linkoeping University in Sweden were also
involved in the later stages of this research and greatly helped with the
framing of the underlying arguments and fieldwork.
Last but not least, with respect to the research on the semiconductor
community in Silicon Valley, California, I am grateful to Professor Mark
Granovetter in the Department of Sociology at Stanford University, who
kindly invited me to be part of his groundbreaking research group on Silicon
Valley networks in 1999, and more recently in 2004. It was our collaboration
with doctoral students and now colleagues, Dr Sean Everton, Dr Tsutsui
Kiyoteru and Dr Emilio Castilla, that brought this research into focus and
initiated the inquiry that I am pursuing in greater depth here. I would also
like to acknowledge the encouragement from Professor Harry Rowen and
Dr Rafiq Dossani at Stanford’s Asia-Pacific Research Center, who gave
me the opportunity to meet and work with Professor Martin Kenney at the
University of California at Davis and Berkeley, to explore in depth the rela-
tional nature of academic entrepreneurship in the Departments of Electrical
Engineering and Computer Science at Stanford and UC Berkeley.
The compilation of this book, however, is the result of the tolerance and
support of colleagues in the Grenoble Ecole de Management. In particular, I
am very appreciative of Dean Thierry Grange and Vice-Dean Loick Roche
for allowing me the luxury of time to concentrate on and produce this
monograph. The impeccable support of my series editor, Professor David
Preece, and Terry Clague and his team at Routledge has also greatly helped
with the production of this book.
Finally, and most importantly, I am indebted to my partner Floriane and
my daughter Eleana for the love, moral support and encouragement beyond
any words which they have brought to this project over the past few years. I
dedicate this book to them, and to my mother Eleni-Anastasia, who inspired
in me the love of learning.
1 Introduction

1.1 Communities and networks: triggers and drivers for

innovation
A fundamental assumption of current strategy and policy thinking is that
research and technological development (RTD) is of vital importance for
innovation and competition among firms, industries and even nations
(Mowery and Nelson 1999; Bresnahan and Gambardella 2004). In particular,
information and communication technology (ICT) RTD is considered to be
one of the great forces that has fuelled the emergence of knowledge-based
economies and shaped the future of human societies in the last five decades.
ICT RTD, like all computer-based technology-related work, is a social
construct to a significant extent, as different actors and groups constantly
shape the development of new technological ensembles (Blosch and Preece
2000) during their conception, adoption and diffusion. Diffusion research
starts from the need to understand how and why a specific technological or/
and organisational innovation spreads within a social system (Rogers 2003).
But sociology of technology and innovation start from the other end, trying
to describe and explain how and why a specific social system, such as a tech-
nological community, or a heterogeneous network of engineers, scientists
and entrepreneurs, shapes the development of an innovation and the RTD
work underpinning its development (Bijker and Law 1992; Callon 1993;
Latour 2005).
Ongoing research at the crossroads of the fields of technology, innovation
and knowledge management; organisational theory and learning; and soci-
ology and economics of networks suggest that technological evolution in key
application areas for a competitive future, such as ICT RTD, increasingly
requires a sustained focus on the ‘invisible hands’ of technological communi-
ties of actors and their variegated networks, which systematically produce
new knowledge and attach meaning to new technologies as they originate
and diffuse across heterogeneous organisational and institutional settings,
disciplinary and professional groupings, as well as geographical boundaries.
This book therefore attempts to address the following topics:

• what is distinctive about technological communities and networks for

illuminating the origins and different development paths of ICT tech-
nologies in heterogeneous multi-level contexts;
2 Introduction
• how technological communities and networks shape a broad range of
new computer-based ICT RTD, spanning such diverse areas of interest
as semiconductors, asynchronous microprocessor architectures, Inter-
net security, geographic information systems (GIS), electronic copyright
management and intellectual property rights protection, across a large
variety of organisational and institutional settings;
• why technological communities and networks are destined to gain
increased importance in explaining how new technologies emerge and
take different forms and functions in regional, national and international
scales, against a background of the increased globalisation of basic and
applied research and development activities.

In ICT RTD work, founders of start-ups, hardware and software firms, ven-
dors, policy and decision makers from government agencies, academics and
researchers from various backgrounds are some of the individual, organisa-
tional and institutional actors which form new technological communities
and networks shaping the origins, evolution and diffusion of new technol-
ogy. The underlying argument of this book is therefore that ICT RTD work
in cross-national, national and regional scales can be analysed through the
study of relevant pre-existing and new technological communities and net-
works, much beyond organisational boundaries and any single inventor of
genius, founder or talented individual. One of the main findings is that it
takes a technological community to trigger a technological revolution. The
embryo of such a community is a handful of men and even fewer organisa-
tions. Technological revolutions are collective, community-based efforts,
which unlike scientific revolutions are rarely the product of a single genius.
This chapter sets the scene for the book. Section 1.2 explains its research
strategy by positioning this research within the fields of social informatics
(Kling 2000), and science and technology studies (STS) (Bijker, Hughes and
Pinch 1987; Latour 2005), also making particular reference to communities
and networks of practice, technological communities and other relevant
technological collaboration literature. Section 1.3 presents the book’s aims
and objectives, also explaining its internal organisation. Section 1.4 sets
out in broad terms the research methodology for collecting, analysing and
visualising network and other data for the communities and networks
studied below.

1.2 A multi-theoretical and multi-level research strategy

The research strategy of the book encompasses a multi-theoretical and
multi-level approach in studying technological communities and networks
in a broad range of information-rich and -poor settings over the past five
decades. There are three bodies of theoretical work – on technology,
innovation and knowledge management; social constructivism and STS;
and structural sociology and technological collaboration – that inform the
 Introduction 3
discussion below (see also Chapters 2 and 3). Empirical evidence is also
presented from three sets of projects at cross-national, national and regional
levels of analysis (see also Chapters 4 to 6). The dual justification for pursuing
such a multi-faceted research strategy is the heterogeneous process of
accelerating organisational and technological change itself, related to ICT
RTD work in hardware, software and services, with no clear boundaries –
institutional, disciplinary or geographical – as well as the complex nature
of socio-technical and techno-economic interactions underlying new ICT
conception and diffusion in the European Union, the United States and
worldwide.
The first body of theory that informs this research was originated in social
anthropology and highlights the value of communities of practice (CoPs) for
organisational learning and innovation. Etienne Wenger and Jean Lave
started publishing their research (Lave and Wenger 1991) on the role of
situated learning and legitimate peripheral participation in CoPs in the early
1990s. Wenger and his collaborators went on to develop his theory on CoP
through the 1990s and early 2000s. Wenger (1998) is widely accepted as the
seminal book on the topic. Wenger et al. (2002) have recently tried to
capitalise on the success of the earlier work to make it useful to practising
managers and business executives who are interested in managing know-
ledge and CoPs for fostering learning and innovation. John Seely Brown and
Paul Duguid were early adopters of the CoP framework for studying
organisational learning and knowledge creation in the Xerox Corporation
(Brown and Duguid 1991). Their book on the social life of information
(Brown and Duguid 2000a) is a significant contribution to the social infor-
matics and knowledge management literature, since it highlights the import-
ance of situated learning as a social process within CoPs in one of the largest
technologically sophisticated and most innovative ICT companies on earth
(see also Chapter 2).
The main strength of Wenger’s research has to do with the innovative way
in which organisations are conceptualised as constellations of informal
CoPs, instead of formal functions, departments and the like. Additionally,
Wenger’s discussion on what are the defining characteristics of a CoP, how
CoPs evolve over time, and how personal identities are formed within CoPs
are extremely useful for academics and laymen alike. However, much RTD
work today, especially in complex and knowledge-intensive applications
areas such as ICT, is taking place across the organisational boundary
(Carayannis and Alexander 1999), through inter-organisational networks
(e.g. strategic alliances and joint ventures), and personal informal networks
(Assimakopoulos and Macdonald 2002) connecting key people to scientific,
engineering, policy and finance communities across organisational, regional
and national boundaries. Wenger’s CoPs seem to ignore all this RTD work,
focussing mainly on the processes of working and learning ‘within’ the
organisational boundary, and in particular, within CoPs of a simple social
configuration, such as claim processors, butchers and midwives.
4 Introduction
Moreover, CoP theory seems to be rather generic, ignoring the centrality
of some communities compared to others in complex networked innova-
tions (Swan, Scarbrough and Robertson 2002). As some commentators have
observed, CoPs seem to be rather amorphous and take too lightly the power
relationships among different CoPs who attach meaning to particular
technologies (Fox 2000). The latter limitation of CoP theory is treated with
due care within the field of STS. STS studies, and in particular social
constructivism of technological systems, gained prominence in many social
science disciplines, including technology and innovation management, after
the publication of the volume edited by Wiebe Bijker et al. (1987). This semi-
nal book put forward a number of theories and models of socio-technical
and techno-economic change that shed light on the social construction of
technological ensembles in a broad range of contexts. The concepts of
‘relevant social groups’ put forward by Pinch and Bijker (1987), and ‘tech-
nological community’ put forward by Edward Constant (1980, 1987) seem
particularly useful for this research, since new ICTs have a programmable
nature and an open architecture allowing a considerable degree of ‘trans-
lation’ and ‘adaptation’ to meet the needs of different designers, local user
groups and associated technological communities (see also Chapter 2).
From the outset it seems that no matter which social groups participate in
situated learning and in the subsequent shaping of a new technology this
book argues that there is always an inner circle, or core of actor networks,
which is associated with pre-existing and new technological communities,
that critically influence the development path of a new technology, regard-
less of how many relevant social groups, technological communities or CoPs
participate in the socio-technical processes underlying the shaping of the
technology.
Edward Constant (1980), a historian of technology at Carnegie Mellon
University, studied the origins of turbojet technology. He put forward the
notion of a technological community, mainly based on the ideas of the
historian of science Thomas Kuhn (1970). Kuhn argued that the cognitive
locus of science is a well-defined community of scientists which is associated
with some paradigm. Constant (1980, 1987) argues that the social locus of
technological knowledge is a community of practitioners which creates and
follows a technological tradition of practice associated with the evolution of
a particular technology. Constant has stopped publishing on technological
communities since the late 1980s. It is also worth noting that Wenger and his
CoP theory do not make any reference to the earlier work by Constant. This
book deliberately tries to draw the connections between CoPs and technol-
ogical communities, and also takes stock of a third body of literature from
structural sociology and technological collaboration, addressing head-on the
first limitation of CoPs identified above.
Barry Wellman, a network sociologist based at Ontario, has been studying
networked communities since the 1970s (Wellman 1979, 1999). Wellman has
shifted the emphasis of the community question from inward-looking local-
 Introduction 5
ised communities to personal communities without propinquity, based on
social networks across large geographical distances. This book argues that if
the notion of technological community is conceived using a social network
perspective (see, for example, Wellman 1988, and Sorensen and Waguespack
2005, for a recent review of research on social networks and the organisation
of research and development), since actors and linkages are the building
blocks of the idea, they can be subsequently used in a meaningful way to
move our thinking away from territorial definitions of community and a
view of RTD based on individual geniuses associated single-handedly with
particular inventions and technological innovations.
This line of research on local and global networking, and the value of
cross-national and cross-regional collaboration of technical communities,
has attracted considerable academic interest with respect to RTD work in
new ICT in the United States and worldwide. Distinguished regional econo-
mists, such as Annalee Saxenian (2002, 2006) at Berkeley, argue convincingly
for the emergence of the new ‘Argonauts’ in global technology regions, as
far apart as Silicon Valley, Taiwan and Israel. Earlier in the 1990s, institu-
tional economists and technology management scholars in Manchester (UK)
and elsewhere (see, for example, Coombs et al. 1996) identified a number of
the key issues for technological collaboration in RTD work and networks in
industrial innovation across the firm boundary (see also Chapter 3).
The analysis and evaluation of empirical findings for this book brings
together qualitative and quantitative evidence from three sets of projects at
international, national and regional levels of analysis, carried out by the
author and his collaborators over the past decade or so. Chapter 4 sheds
light on cross-national research in ICT through the personal informal net-
works of Esprit (European Strategic Programme for Research in IT) main
contractors in the United Kingdom and throughout the European Union in
the 1990s. Chapter 5 focuses on the origins and evolution of the Greek GIS
community from the early 1980s to the early 1990s, as a result of the diffusion
of GIS innovations on a national scale and in its early critical stages for the
shaping of GIS technology in Greece. Last but not least, Chapter 6 examines
the origins and evolution of a regional technological community, the semi-
conductor community in Silicon Valley (SV), California, through a genealogy
chart of the Semiconductor Equipment and Materials International (SEMI)
from the late 1950s to the 1980s, as well as university–industry relations
through academic entrepreneurship at the departments of Computer Science
and Electrical Engineering at Stanford University and the University of
California at Berkeley.

1.3 Aims and objectives; organisation of the book

The main assumptions underlying this book are that it is possible to gain an
understanding of ICT RTD work in multiple levels of analysis, as well as the
origins and evolution of new technology in its early critical stages of
6 Introduction
development, through the study of technological communities and colla-
boration networks across organisational, geographical, institutional and
disciplinary boundaries. To this end, two main sets of objectives can be
identified:

• to develop a conceptual framework in the light of the three bodies of

research identified above in technology, innovation and knowledge
management; organisational theory and learning; and sociology and
economics of networks; for studying the notions of technological com-
munity and collaboration networks, for knowledge-intensive innovation
in ICT RTD work;
• to sketch the profiles, analyse and evaluate the network structures, i.e.
actors and linkages, in terms of both static and dynamics, of the tech-
nological communities related to GIS innovations in Greece, and
semiconductors in SV, plus the personal networks of Esprit contractors
in the United Kingdom and beyond.

In this way, whole networks of actors, people, groups and organisations who
have socially constructed ICT-related innovations through RTD work in
cross-national, national and regional perspectives, can be depicted, analysed
and evaluated, gaining insights into the value of technological communities
and networks in distributed inter-organisational ICT innovations. These
network perspectives can also highlight who are the actors and groups who
have instigated technological revolutions and formed the core of related
technological communities and networks shaping and attaching meaning to
ICT innovations in different settings and through different time periods of
study over the past five decades.
Such aims and objectives have three significant advantages. They build
upon existing bodies of literature, while the emphasis of the discussion is
kept on the notions of technological communities and networks. They
provide a heuristic way to study the processes through which a large number
of actors play essentially complementary roles fostering innovation in ICT
research, or/and enabling the formation of new technological traditions of
practice within a whole country or region. They can also enrich current
debates about the nature of ICT RTD work, shifting the emphasis of the
discussion towards external sources of knowledge acquisition across organisa-
tional boundaries and social constructs, such as institutional and disciplinary
settings, where new ICT is conceived, embedded and diffused. As a result,
the research underlying this book shows how ICT RTD work is increasingly
embedded on technological communities and networks, and shaped by a
broad range of actors who come from private and public organisations,
including knowledge-generating institutions such as universities.
The book’s objectives are clearly located within existing socio-technical
theories which assume that institutional, organisational and human issues
are of significant importance with respect to effective conception, adoption
 Introduction 7
and diffusion of new ICT (Davenport and Prusak 1998; Macdonald 1998;
Brown and Duguid 2000a, 2001; Orlikowski and Barley 2001; Preece and
Laurila 2003), and that the origins of technological revolutions can be found
in the new technological communities and networks that emerge from
multiple memberships (Rappa and Debackere 1992; Leonard and Sensiper
1998; Cross, Prusak and Parker 2001; Hargadon 2003; Yan and Assimako-
poulos 2003) in new and pre-existing technological communities and
networks related to ICT innovations. The organisation of the book into two
main parts respectively addresses each of the two sets of objectives defined
above. The first part – Chapters 2 and 3 – fulfils the first objective by devel-
oping a conceptual framework for the research, bringing together different
strands of the theoretical perspectives related to technological communities
and collaboration networks in knowledge-intensive innovation and practice.
More specifically, Chapter 2 discusses the key notions of CoPs and tech-
nological communities. It also introduces the notion of community from a
network perspective, making particular reference to communities without
propinquity, such as technical communities related to ICT RTD work which
operate over great distances, linking engineers, scientists and entrepreneurs
across organisational and geographical boundaries. This chapter also dis-
cusses the limitations of the CoP theory with respect to complex knowledge-
intensive RTD work which increasingly spans organisational boundaries
and involves members of a broad range of collaborating and competing
scientific and professional communities and traditions of practice. One of its
sections sets out the key notion of technological community by discussing
the knowledge and socio-cultural dimensions of its source concept of
technological tradition of practice.
Chapter 3 starts from the process of technological innovation, rather than
the communities who socially shape new technologies and institutions, and it
discusses in depth the increasingly important phenomenon of collaboration
and networking in complex knowledge-intensive innovation. It also reviews
the literature on innovation, collaboration and networking with particular
emphasis on the role of formal and informal networks in complex knowledge-
intensive RTD work. Its focus is kept on recent non-linear innovation
models, placing the emphasis of the discussion on flexibility and speed of
RTD work, ‘customer focus’, strategic integration with primary suppliers,
and horizontal linkages such as collaborative research groupings including
collaborative links with direct competitors. One of its sections discusses
European innovation policies supporting collaboration in ICT RTD across
organisational, institutional and national boundaries via new forms of
network organisations such as collaborative projects. The discussion also
highlights the importance of ‘distributed capabilities’, or that new and
emerging technologies are less frequently produced and located within
single firms, but increasingly distributed across a range of firms and other
knowledge-generating institutions, especially in fast-moving areas such as
ICT. Particular attention is paid here to informal networks often of a social
8 Introduction
and personal nature linking firms and other organisations, facilitating the
timely and rapid flow of information for innovation.
The second part of the book presents the main findings in three chapters.
Empirical research and case studies have been undertaken in a broad
range of organisational settings at the cross-national (Chapter 4), national
(Chapter 5) and regional (Chapter 6) scales both in the European Union and
the United States. More specifically, Chapter 4 presents and analyses in a
comparative framework 10 case studies on the informal networks between
the main Esprit contractors in the United Kingdom and throughout the
European Union. Each one of these RTD projects was supported by
the European Commission (EC) within its fourth (1990–4) or fifth (1994–8)
Framework programmes, bringing together a formal network of project
partner organisations throughout Europe. From the outset these knowledge-
intensive complex RTD projects focus on a broad range of emerging
‘distributed’ cutting-edge technologies related to computer hardware and
software innovations. For each case study three-dimensional computer-
animated maps are put together describing the socio-technical configur-
ations of the project network and analysing both its formal and informal
structures. Specialised network analysis and visualisation software (Borgatti,
Everett and Freeman 2002; Richardson and Presley 2001; Batagelj and
Mrvar 2004) is used to produce these maps. Finally this chapter evaluates in
a comparative framework the importance of formal versus informal net-
works for knowledge creation and sharing in such ‘distributed’ and dispersed
networked innovations.
Chapter 5 discusses the origins and development path of a new techno-
logical community in a national scale (i.e. Greece), adopting a longitudinal
approach and focusing on a specific family of computerised technologies
(i.e. GIS). The concept of a GIS community can be investigated through the
existing scientific and technological communities related to the handling
and analysis of geographic information, as well as the actors and their socio-
technical networks which participate in the construction of GIS at local and
national levels in Greece. In other words, from a sociology of technology
standpoint, the question was how we could map the evolutionary path of
GIS technology in Greece from its origins in the early 1980s to the develop-
ment of its critical mass a decade or so later. The study of the structure of the
Greek GIS community was also important for two inter-related reasons.
Networks of GIS actors and linkages can highlight how information about
GIS innovations spreads within a social system such as the Greek GIS
community. More importantly GIS actors and linkages are the building
blocks of complex socio-technical GIS networks that can drive our thinking
away from territorial definitions of the GIS community concept. The study
of patterns of GIS linkages within a whole country in particular can also
open new research avenues for the theoretical exploration of the concept of
a GIS community in different countries and cultures (Harvey 2001; Couclelis
2004).
 Introduction 9
Chapter 6 further narrows down the focus of inquiry on a regional rather
than national scale. It explores the origins and emergence of the technological
community of semiconductor firms in Silicon Valley, and in particular its
unique informal, collaborative and entrepreneurial organisational structure
and culture. Based on the SEMI genealogy chart of SV semiconductor firms,
and identifying all 372 founders and 129 firms which started up in SV from
1957 to 1986, this chapter takes stock of computerised network analysis and
visualisation techniques, and using this genealogy chart it demonstrates how
a new horizontal network community, rather than a hierarchical workplace
organisational culture, was firstly initiated with the foundation of Fairchild
Semiconductor, and more importantly how this new network culture was
diffused in SV through successive generations of ‘Fairchildren’ spin-offs up
to the late-1980s. As was anticipated, the analysis of centrality and promi-
nence of semiconductor founders and firms fuelling the origins and explosive
growth of semiconductor RTD work in SV brings to light the usual suspects
– Fairchild, Intel and Hewlett-Packard – but also a relatively unknown firm
outside the semiconductor community, Intersil Co. It also highlights how
the ‘traitorous eight’ founders of Fairchild instigated a new technological
tradition of practice related to semiconductors and integrated circuits that
gave birth to a new technological community of semiconductor firms that
served as the foundation of SV’s regional advantage for dominating the US
and global micro-electronics industry during the past five decades.
Finally Chapter 7 summarises the main conclusions of this research with
regard to the significance of technological communities and networks, and
also discusses the theory-related implications with respect to the theoretical
models of communities and networks of practice, technological communi-
ties and collaboration and networking. It also discusses the policy-related
implications for RTD work in regional, national and cross-national scales, as
well as the implications of this research for future research in technological
communities and networks in ICT RTD and innovation for a competitive
future.

1.4 Research methodology

This research has adopted a strategy based on a social network perspective
(Granovetter 1985, 2002; Rogers 1987; Wellman 1988; Wasserman and Faust
1994; Freeman, Webster and Kirke 1998; Scott 2000; de Nooy, Mrvar and
Batagelj 2005) and an ethnographic approach (Hammersley and Atkinson
1983; Bryman 1988, 2004) to the study of technological communities and
networks. Network scholars (see, for example, Wellman 1988) argue that it
is possible to understand network phenomena, adopting either an astro-
nomer’s view of ‘the universe’ (i.e. the researcher is an external observer
who studies ‘the entire universe’) or a Ptolemaic view of ‘the universe’ (i.e.
the researcher studies particular actor networks in ‘the centre of this
universe’). The former approach is adopted for Chapters 5 and 6 looking
10 Introduction
into the development of relatively small technological communities at
national and regional scales. The latter approach is particularly suitable for
the presentation of the findings in Chapter 4, as the Esprit ‘universe’ is too
complex to study as a whole, and the focus is kept on mapping the informal
egocentric network of the main partner for each Esprit project network in a
global context, comparing and contrasting it to the formal Esprit network
confined among official partner organisations throughout the European
Union.
The sample for the research in Chapter 4 involved all 67 Esprit projects
with UK main contractors included in the Prosoma (www.prosoma.lu)
showcase. Administrative leaders of these 67 projects were contacted by
post and/or email and asked to identify the individual they considered to be
the technological leader of their project in the UK. The findings presented in
Chapter 4 are based on network data collected from 10 of these Esprit pro-
jects from 1998 to 2000. A formal project network for each main contractor
was identified from the Prosoma and Cordis (www.cordis.lu) databases of
the EC. Subsequently, personal informal networks were mapped following a
multi-step approach. Individuals identified as technological leaders within
the participating main contractors were sent postal questionnaires and each
was asked to nominate up to seven other individuals (Bernard et al. 1984;
Giusti and Georghiou 1988) who had provided information of significant
value for innovation related to the specific Esprit project from within the
project network itself, or any other organisation based in Europe or world-
wide. In the second round, these nominated individuals were themselves
contacted and asked the same question. The nomination process continued
until resources were exhausted and in some cases extended to five rounds.
In addition to the multi-stage postal survey 40 semi-structured, face-
to-face interviews were conducted in leading companies, universities and
government agencies, including the EC itself, in the UK (Cambridge,
London, Manchester, Preston), France (Grenoble, Paris, Sophia-Antipolis),
Belgium (Brussels), Sweden (Stockholm, Linkoeping), Greece (Athens,
Patras), and for some projects in Silicon Valley (Stanford, Los Gatos, San
Francisco and Berkeley) from 1999 to 2001. It is from these that the quota-
tions used in Chapter 4 are derived.
From the outset this research has therefore adopted a social network
analysis (SNA) approach (Wasserman and Faust 1994; de Nooy, Mrvar and
Batagelj 2005) in modelling networks and communities under study. SNA
provides a powerful set of concepts and techniques to analyse relational data
and the ‘hidden’ patterns of connections among actors – see also the
Appendix (p. 200) for a more detailed discussion of SNA concepts and
metrics used below. For example, SNA uses the notion of ‘degree’ to measure
how many other actors directly link to a certain actor; ‘centrality’ to measure
how critical an actor is in a network according to a measure such as ‘degree’;
and ‘density’ to measure how closely a group of actors are connected – see
also the Glossary (p. 203). SNA seeks to model patterns of linkages and to
 Introduction 11
describe the underlying structure of any social network or community. The
power of SNA stems from its fundamental difference from non-network
methodologies that ignore the underlying pattern of linkages among actors.
In a non-network study, researchers often focus on the attributes of
individual actors, who are viewed as isolates and under-socialised profit-
maximising seekers (Granovetter 1985, 2002). From a SNA perspective the
attributes of individual actors are less important than their past and ongoing
relationships with other actors within the social network in which they are
embedded. The behaviour of actors, say in terms of information and know-
ledge exchanges related to innovation, arises and is guided by structural or
relational processes and norms arising out of the group and social network in
which they are embedded.
For the sake of clarity, an actor or stakeholder in an informal network or/
and technological community can be defined as an individual, a group or an
organisation that has an interest in ICT RTD work, including GIS or semi-
conductor innovations, and plays a role in the conception, adoption and
diffusion of relevant technological or/and organisational innovations at
local, national or international scale. A linkage is a connection between two
actors or stakeholders and it may take various forms:

• a formal or contractual connection (e.g. GIS software vendor and central

government agency, a co-founder relation between any two founders
for starting up a semiconductor firm in SV, a sub-contractor relation to
the EC with respect to an Esprit project consortium);
• an informal connection between acquaintances or occasional contacts
who share and exchange information about RTD work, or more
generally knowledge and advice related to ICT innovations;
• and finally a personal connection of a social nature between fellow
members of a private or public organisation, university, professional
association, or between fellow citizens who share a common interest or
are simply friends.

A network approach was adopted for this research for two additional
reasons. First, it is based on the belief that regardless of whether a social
system consists of a small group, a large organisation or an entire community
an understanding of its social structure can facilitate (or impede) the
emergence, adoption and diffusion of a technological or organisational
innovation because it uncovers the ‘hidden’ deep structure of relations,
where individuals actors are embedded. Note that network or community
members, like individuals and firms, know their own linkages but they rarely
know all the actors and linkages that make up a social network or community.
Second, as will be discussed in Chapters 5 and 6, a key element of the socio-
cultural dimension of a new technological tradition of practice is the social
structure that emerges from persistent patterns of interactions, especially in
the early critical stages of community development, between members of a
12 Introduction
new technological community who initiate and attach meaning to GIS and
semiconductor-related innovations in different locations, and across a broad
range of organisational settings.
An ethnographic and social anthropological approach was also adopted in
Chapter 5 to facilitate specifically the study of the Greek GIS community
from within in flexible and economical ways that allowed the researcher to
evaluate his findings while doing the field research in Greece in the early
1990s. As a result of about 100 in-depth interviews and additional participant
observation data from various community events during the study period,
the author incrementally updated and extended his list of contacts selecting
the individuals, groups and organisations who most often came up as
important to meet, either because of their formal positions and relations or
because of their experiences and knowledge of GIS technology. The main
criteria for the choice of the people and groups forming the GIS community
in Greece were their experience with GIS adoption and implementation as
well as their key role in the development of GIS applications through various
projects in a broad range of settings. Supporting evidence for the commit-
ment of these individuals and groups in adopting and implementing GIS
innovations in Greece, as well as their critical contribution to the develop-
ment of GIS applications, was provided in a variety of contexts through their
peers.
Snowball sampling of actors and linkages as suggested by Rogers and
Kincaid (1981: 109) was used for the field research of the Greek GIS com-
munity which was carried out in several cities and in three different stages
from 1992 to 1994. In the snowball sampling approach an original sample of
respondents (‘starters’) are asked to name their peers, who then become the
respondents in a second phase of data gathering, their contacts thus
nominated becoming respondents in a third phase, etc. In this way tracing
and studying the linkages is a process similar to that of a snowball rolling
downhill as the sample grows slowly at the beginning and increasingly faster
in later stages. The obvious advantage of the snowball sampling method is
that the researcher does not arbitrarily impose the boundaries of the social
system under study, but gradually uncovers them through the different
responses of the participants in the research. Moreover such a sampling
method provides a significant advantage to researchers who also want to use
qualitative methods like participant observation, as it gradually allows both
the identification and interaction with the respondents following the net-
work linkages of the ‘starters’ in a multi-step sequence.
Last but not least, for Chapter 6 the SEMI genealogy chart was used to
create a comprehensive database of relational data about all the co-founders
and co-founded semiconductor firms in SV from the late 1950s to the late
1980s. From this secondary data set were extracted one-mode socio-matrices
showing one set of actors and their linkages, e.g. the co-founder linkages
among individuals or co-founded firms, as well as two-mode socio-matrices
showing two sets of actors and their linkages, i.e. the main component of the
 Introduction 13
SV semiconductor community showing both the founders and founded firms
( see also Chapter 6 and Appendix). In addition to this data set, based on a
recent study by Kenney and Goe (2004), the author got access to Internet
and postal survey data and re-classified a relational data set with respect to
founder, director and advisor relationships for professorial entrepreneur-
ship in the departments of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering at
Stanford University and the University of California Berkeley (see also
Assimakopoulos and Kenney 2005). Chapter 6 also discusses in more detail
methods of network data analysis and visualisation wherever it is considered
appropriate.

1.5 Summary
This chapter has set the scene for the book. Section 1.2 presented its multi-
theoretical and multi-level research strategy. Three bodies of literature were
briefly highlighted from technology, innovation and knowledge manage-
ment; organisational theory and learning; and sociology and economics of
networks; with pointers to the key notions of communities and networks of
practice, as well as network technological communities.
The main aims and objectives, as well as the internal organisation of the
book were outlined in Section 1.3. Based on the assumption that techno-
logical communities and networks can enlighten us about the origins and
development paths of ICT RTD work in a broad range of information-rich
and -poor settings, as well as the relationships between pre-existing and new
‘revolutionary’ technological traditions of practice, two sets of objectives
were presented with respect to developing a conceptual framework on the
one hand, and analysing and evaluating our empirical findings on the other,
with regard to the personal networks of the main Esprit contractors in the
UK and beyond; the origins and evolution of the Greek GIS community;
and the origins and evolution of the SV semiconductor community.
Last but not least, the research methodology for this book was briefly
presented in Section 1.4. From the outset, it was highlighted that the research
has employed a social network approach including concepts and methods –
see also the Appendix and the Glossary – that can shed light on the statics
and dynamics of actors and linkages that make up the technological
communities and networks under investigation.
2 Communities as the social locus
of knowledge-intensive
technological practice

2.1 Introduction
This section of the book discusses the conceptual framework adopted for
this research. Two complementary theoretical perspectives of communities
and collaboration networks in complex knowledge-intensive RTD work are
presented. This chapter presents concepts of community as the social locus
of knowledge in technological practice. It makes particular reference to
personal network communities facilitated by communication and transpor-
tation technologies, communities of practice within organisational settings,
and scientific and technological communities of practice enabling the devel-
opment of existing and new technological traditions. Chapter 3 discusses
collaboration and networking in RTD work starting from the processes of
technological innovation, rather than the communities which socially shape
new ideas and technologies. Social networks are considered important for
both theoretical perspectives because they play a crucial role in understand-
ing how knowledge about new technologies is created and shared, and
because they highlight how various actors and groups give meaning to a
technological innovation over great distances by reinventing and translating
it during its adoption and implementation processes.
This chapter is divided into five additional sections. Section 2.2 introduces
the notion of community without propinquity and also discusses personal
network communities facilitated by communication and transportation
technologies across large geographical distances. Section 2.3 discusses the
concept of community of practice and how technology-related knowledge is
often acquired through informal socialisation and situated learning in
organisational and occupational communities of practitioners. Section 2.4
focuses on the relationship between scientific and technological communities
also presenting the social constructivist model of technology stabilisation
with particular emphasis on the concept of relevant social groups. Section
2.5 presents the concept of technological community, also discussing the
notion of multiple memberships in different communities for enabling the
development of new technological traditions of practice. Finally Section 2.6
is the chapter summary.
 Communities as the social locus of practice 15
2.2 Personal network communities
Community is a concept with a long history in sociology (Tonnies 1957; Bell
and Newby 1971) and other disciplines such as anthropology (Mitchell 1969)
and urban planning (Park 1952). In the past sociologists defined a commu-
nity primarily in terms of its spatial dimension as a territorially localised
system of social relationships. In this sense, a monastery, a village or a
neighbourhood is a small community of people who live together in a certain
place (Sampson 1968). The critical issue which defines a community is ties
between its members. For example, Weber (1947: 136) defines a communal
relationship as ‘a social relationship which is based on a subjective feeling of
the parties, whether affective or traditional, that they belong together’.
Nisbet (1970: 47) argues that the relations between the members of a
community are characterised by solidarity, intimacy, emotional depth, moral
commitment, social cohesion and continuity in time. These are important
issues for the well being of the individuals who belong to the community.
The same issues explain why the members of the community come together,
form and maintain this social system. However, it is often implicitly assumed
that a social system should be enclosed, inward-looking and localised to
achieve these characteristics (see for example, Nisbet 1970; Stein 1960) but
this does not hold much water nowadays, and in particular is of limited
usefulness for the study of new technological communities such as a new
GIS community at a national scale (see Chapter 5). If the notion of com-
munity is therefore conceived using a network perspective, since actors and
linkages are the building blocks of the idea they can be subsequently used in
a meaningful way to move our thinking away from territorial and group-
centric definitions of community (Wellman 1988).
The idea of a community without propinquity appeared in the early 1960s
(Webber 1964) and shifted the emphasis of the discussion of community
questions towards common values, beliefs and interests within a social net-
work of actors, rather than spatial proximity, kinship or some kind of obli-
gatory solidarity found in inward-looking social systems such as traditional
villages. This idea of a community without propinquity is clearly illustrated
in the concept of a community of scholars, or what has been called an
invisible college of scientists (Crane 1972), where, for example, a professor
at Stanford University in California may be better connected with other
scholars in England, Japan, or Australia than his or her neighbours at
Stanford, because of common ideas or scientific interests.
However, the idea of communities without propinquity is not a recent
phenomenon. There were such communities in the middle ages (e.g.
Benedictine monks, the masons who built the Gothic cathedrals) and even
earlier in the Roman empire and the ancient Greek schools of philosophy
(Popper 1998). One could argue that there have always been communities of
this type. But because of increasing trends towards globalisation, com-
munities without propinquity are now becoming much more common than
16 Communities as the social locus of practice
previously. Perhaps in the third millennium more and more people will
belong to such communities with no physical centre and clear geographical
boundaries. In current jargon, these communities can be termed virtual
communities (Rheingold 1994).
Network scholars such as Wellman (1979, 1999, 2002) have argued con-
vincingly for the past few decades that community has not been lost but has
been transformed into sparsely knit and loosely bound networks reflecting
people’s multiple memberships and identities in contemporary societies and
economies. Social and communication networks connecting various actors
across large geographical distances highlight this transformation (Wellman
and Leighton 1979; Wellman and Wortley 1990; Wellman and Gulia 1999;
Koku and Wellman 2004). People benefit from participating in such personal
network communities as they can informally share scarce resources, seize
opportunities across great geographical distances and learn from close
friends as well as weak ties (Granovetter 1973, 1982). Transportation and
communication networks and technologies including airplanes and the
Internet have facilitated physical mobility and regular contacts to a signifi-
cant extent, fostering socio-economic relationships locally and globally,
creating what Wellman (2002) calls ‘glocalised’ network communities.
Saxenian’s (2002, 2003, 2005) studies on global technology regions show,
for example, how Taiwanese engineers, entrepreneurs and venture capital-
ists have successfully built and maintained personal ‘glocalised’ network
communities connecting technical, financial and policy communities in
Hsinchu, Taiwan, with their counterparts in Silicon Valley, California,
strengthening the economies of both regions and reversing what not long
ago was thought of as ‘brain drain’ to ‘brain circulation’. The net result of
such ‘glocalised’ communities is faster upgrading of the Taiwanese semi-
conductor and micro-electronics industries for key application areas, such as
personal computers and mobile phones, fostering continuous innovation
and learning across technology generations, and sustaining superior techni-
cal and business performance against intensifying global competition.

The growing integration of the technological communities of Silicon

Valley and Hsinchu offers benefits to both economies. Silicon Valley
remains the center of new product definition and the developer of
leading edge technologies, while Taiwan offers world class manu-
facturing, flexible development and integration, and access to key
customers and markets in China and Southeast Asia. Unlike the arms-
length and top-down technology transfers between large firms that
characterized the relations between Japan and the USA in the 1980s,
the Silicon Valley–Hsinchu relationship today consists of formal and
informal collaborations between individual investors and entrepreneurs,
small and medium-sized firms, as well as divisions of larger companies
located on both sides of the Pacific.
In this complex mix, the social and professional ties among Taiwanese
 Communities as the social locus of practice 17
engineers at home and their counterparts in the USA are often as
important as more formal corporate alliances and partnerships. These
relationships have been essential to establishing, maintaining, and
upgrading Taiwan’s role in global production networks – through OEM
and ODM relationships and the myriad of other inter-firm partnerships
that exploit the distinct and complementary capabilities of Silicon Valley
and Hsinchu-based producers.
(Saxenian 2002: 190–1)

The new ‘Argonauts’, as Saxenian (2006) calls these entrepreneurs and other
individuals from places as far apart as Taiwan, Israel and Ireland, link small
and large firms, technology markets and global production networks in an
increasingly volatile and knowledge-intensive global economy. As a result
of technological and economic advances coupled with political will, societies
and economies open up a wide spectrum of choice for an increasing number
of individuals who work in knowledge-intensive industries such as entre-
preneurs and academics to establish and maintain social linkages outside
their local social circles. The spatial range of support and exchange
relationships has not disappeared but it has been transformed and expanded
to encompass countries, continents and, in the ultimate case, the globe as a
whole, fostering what Castells (1996, 2001) calls the network society and/or
knowledge economy.
For example, a key objective of the EU, since 1992, has been to achieve
greater economic, political, social and technological integration within and
between the member states. As a result of this objective and other historical
processes at the European and global scales, both individuals and organi-
sations are able to take advantage of new opportunities to forge new multiple
linkages with a significantly larger diversity of ties in a much wider frame-
work for cooperation or competition (see, for example, the Esprit project
networks in Chapter 4). Against this background of increasing globalisation
it is more than ever meaningful to analyse the notion of community adopting
a network approach and thinking about personal ‘glocalised’ network com-
munities where the emphasis is kept not only on individual actors but also
on the set of relationships that connect these actors across all sorts of
geographical and institutional boundaries.

2.3 Communities of practice

Social anthropologists Lave and Wenger (1991) started publishing their
research on the role of ‘situated learning’ through socialisation in com-
munities of practice within organisational settings more than a decade ago.
Wenger (1998) went on to develop his theory of community of practice
(CoP) through the 1990s and early 2000s (see also Wenger et al. 2002). Lave
and Wenger (1991: 98) define a CoP as ‘a set of relations among persons,
activity, and world, over time and in relation with other tangential and
18 Communities as the social locus of practice
overlapping communities of practice’. The emphasis here is kept on learning
and knowledge relations through mutual engagement, joint enterprise, and
shared repertoire. According to Wenger (1998: 3) a CoP provides the social
construct that places learning and knowledge in the ‘context of our lived
experience of participation in the world’ as it refers to a group of people who
share a common practice, have the need to share and exchange knowledge
about a specific domain on an everyday basis, and are bounded by informal
relationships and a shared identity within organisational boundaries.
Unlike the scholars reviewed in the previous section, Wenger and his
collaborators focus on the local ‘situated’ nature of CoPs, within ‘low-tech’
apprenticeship communities. Claim processors in an insurance company,
midwives, tailors, navy quartermasters and butchers were some of the
communities that Wenger and his collaborators analysed in order to explain
how newcomers learn from old-timers a certain work-related task embedded
in the ongoing practice of a specific community. When a newcomer joins a
CoP, instead of learning abstract knowledge, s/he learns to become a mem-
ber of the community by developing relationships with more experienced
members. First, learners participate at the periphery of community activity
where they begin to assimilate and adopt the community’s language, beliefs
and practice. There are various paths through which learning in such occu-
pational communities takes place. ‘Changing locations and perspectives are
part of an actor’s learning trajectories, developing identities, and forms of
membership’ (Lave and Wenger 1991: 36). How much a newcomer can learn
is largely determined by the level of legitimacy of his/her participation, i.e.
the extent s/he is accepted by other members of the community who can
provide more (or less) learning opportunities.
Above all CoP theory is therefore a social learning theory stressing the
importance of social participation for generating and sharing context-
specific knowledge. Moreover CoP theory sheds light on why un-codified or
tacit knowledge is always ‘sticky’ within particular organisational contexts,
since to learn more requires more social participation and acceptance by the
other members of a community who can facilitate (or inhibit) situated learn-
ing and knowledge-productive relations. Wenger’s research conceptualises
an organisation not as a traditional set of formal functions, departments and
the like, but rather as a constellation of CoPs that allow members to learn
and create knowledge through mutual engagement, joint enterprise and
shared experiences. This view of a firm as a learning organism consisting of
multiple CoPs is a major contribution of the CoP theory and it is consistent
with associated research conducted by Brown and Duguid (1991, 1998,
2000b) in one of the most innovative companies on earth, the Xerox Cor-
poration. Since a firm is usually composed of CoPs with a certain degree of
autonomy and legitimacy, these CoPs engage in new experiments, which
have the potential to overcome organisational rigidities (Leonard-Barton
1992, 1995). CoPs therefore do not only foster learning but also contribute to
innovation because of their constant adaptation to changing circumstances
 Communities as the social locus of practice 19
and membership. In daily work, CoPs also interact with other CoPs and are
influenced by members who maintain multiple memberships in different
communities (see also Section 2.5 below).
According to Wenger’s analysis very often ‘normal practice’ does not
correspond to the explicitly described functions and standard operating
procedures within an organisation. Normal practice is often interpreted
according to personal experiences, and the membership of one or more
CoPs facilitates innovation within particular CoPs through what Brown and
Duguid (1991) call ‘non-canonical practice’. CoP theory therefore provides
new insights into how organisations work in practice and how they learn to
become more innovative by accommodating ‘non-canonical practices’. In
CoP theory the term ‘practice’ refers broadly to a shared experience (e.g.
claim processing) including all the activities of a group of people who work
together to accomplish a shared task, usually involving collaboration among
individuals within an organisational setting or occupational community
(Van Maanen and Barley 1984). Through common practice, a CoP develops
a shared understanding of what it does, how members carry out everyday
work, and how this particular CoP relates to and differs from other CoPs.
Each CoP is therefore engaging in experiential and interpretive activities
with its environment. These activities lead to a common understanding of
the practice in hand, a sense of a common identity, and if managed properly
they can potentially contribute to innovation with regard to various work-
related practices (Wenger et al. 2002).
However, there are certain limitations to CoP theory which are discussed
next. There has been plenty of literature over the past decade or so that has
suggested that in fast-moving knowledge-intensive industries the capability
of firms to access and absorb knowledge from external sources is a more
important source of creating and sustaining competitive advantage than
managing the existing stock of knowledge within the firms’ boundaries
(Badaracco 1991; Leonard-Barton 1995; Boisot 1998; Nonaka and Konno
1998; Teece 1998; DeCarolis and Deeds 1999; Fleming, King and Juda 2004).
As will be discussed in detail in the next chapter much knowledge in high-
technology industries flows through inter-organisational collaborative link-
ages such as strategic alliances and joint ventures (Osborn and Hagedoorn
1997; Hagedoorn, Link and Vonortas 2000) and also through informal per-
sonal networks (Allen 1977; Rogers 1982; Macdonald 1995, 1996; Conway
and Steward 1998; Assimakopoulos and Macdonald 2003). In particular,
RTD work in complex and knowledge-intensive applications areas such as
ICT and biotechnology is increasingly taking place across the organisational
boundary, through inter-organisational networks and personal informal net-
works connecting key people to scientific, engineering, policy and finance
communities across organisational, disciplinary and national boundaries
(see above, and also the next chapter).
Wenger’s CoP theory seems to ignore all this RTD work, focusing mainly
on the processes of working and learning ‘within’ the organisational
20 Communities as the social locus of practice
boundary, and in particular within CoPs of a simple social configuration,
such as claim processors, butchers and midwives. The focus on the relatively
simple low-complexity work environments of, for example, claim processors
(Wenger 1998), copier salespeople (Østerlund 1996), photocopier repair-
men (Orr 1996), midwifes, butchers, tailors, and others (Lave and Wenger
1991), coupled with the methodological and epistemological demands of
ethnographic cases of CoPs, may explain why the CoP appears to be a
group-centric concept assuming an inward-looking, self-evolving tightly knit
group, where members are closely connected but with few external linkages
outside the boundaries of their organisation or workplace. Wenger (1998:
125) identifies a comprehensive list of 14 indicators for diagnosing the
existence of a CoP:

1 sustained mutual relationships – harmonious or conflictual;

2 shared ways of engaging in doing things together;
3 the rapid flow of information and propagation of innovation;
4 absence of introductory preambles, as if conversations and interactions
were merely the continuation of an ongoing process;
5 very quick set-up of a problem to be discussed;
6 substantial overlap in participants’ descriptions of who belongs;
7 knowing what others know, what they can do, and how they can contri-
bute to an enterprise;
8 mutually defining identities;
9 the ability to assess the appropriateness of actions and products;
10 specific tools, representations and other artefacts;
11 local lore, shared stories, insider jokes, knowing laughter;
12 jargon and shortcuts to communication as well as the ease of producing
new ones;
13 certain styles recognised as displaying membership;
14 a shared discourse reflecting a certain perspective on the world.

This set of indicators can only be fulfilled by a limited number of CoPs, most
often situated in a common location such as an apprentice-based workplace
or office. Many large and small firms, however, organise their RTD work in
distributed workplaces (e.g. Lam 1997, 2003). Colleagues who have close
working relations are not always located in a single place or organisation.
Work can take place by phone calls, emails, the electronic exchange of docu-
ments, and face-to-face interactions in diverse settings. Recently researchers
have therefore tried to expand the CoP theory into inter-organisational
settings: for example, in the work of distributed communities of practice
across international boundaries (Hildreth and Kimble 2000) and virtual
communities of practice (Kimble, Hildreth and Wright 2001).
Brown and Duguid (2001: 198) have also recently pointed out that ‘often
too much attention is paid to the idea of community, too little to the impli-
cations of practice’. Their analysis of practice has highlighted the epistemic
 Communities as the social locus of practice 21
differences across different practices and the significance of CoP theory in
explaining how knowledge is not only embedded in CoPs within organisa-
tional boundaries and occupational communities (Van Maanen and Barley
1984), but also networks of practice (NoPs) that extend beyond the organisa-
tional boundary (Brown and Duguid 2001). Because of shared practice
Brown and Duguid (2001) argue that knowledge can be both ‘sticky’ and
‘leaky’. Individuals who share a common practice can easily communicate
within organisational boundaries with other members of the local CoP.
Moreover, knowledge related to a common practice can easily be shared
within a broader network of practitioners, as well as collective groupings,
such as professional associations (Swan et al. 1999) or specialised online
communities of interest (Assimakopoulos and Yan 2006b).
Last but not least, CoP theory seems to be rather generic, ignoring the
centrality of some CoPs compared to others in complex networked inno-
vations. See, for example, Swan et al. (2002) who highlight the centrality of
one group of medical doctors (i.e. surgeons) over other relevant professional
groups (e.g. urologists) in the process of shaping a new treatment of prostate
cancer. As Fox (2000) and other commentators (e.g. Gherardi 2001) have
observed, CoP theory seems to be rather amorphous and takes too lightly
the power relationships among different CoPs who attach meaning to
particular technologies. The latter limitation of CoP theory is treated with
due care within the field of science and technology studies (STS) as is
discussed next.

2.4 Communities in science and the science/technology

relationship
From a historical perspective, the social organisation of scientific progress
assumes a community structure, as Kuhn (especially 1970: 174–210) and
others (Price 1963; Merton 1973; Pickering 1995; Knorr-Cetina 1999) have
asserted. Crane (1972: 63) argues that since the seventeenth century scientists
have pioneered the development of communication networks which were
not confined to local social circles. They have transcended national
boundaries, promoting the exchange and sharing of ideas as well as cross-
fertilising different scientific fields. See, for a recent example, Verspagen
and Werker (2003) who analyse the invisible college of the economics of
innovation and technological change. Crane (1972: 22) also argues that the
growth of scientific knowledge is a kind of diffusion process in which ideas
are communicated from person to person within or between scientific
communities of interest. As a result, the cumulative number of publications
for any scientific field follows the logistic growth curve used to depict the
diffusion of innovations (see Figure 2.1, put forward by Rogers 2003).
As can be seen from Figure 2.1, in stage 1 when a paradigm – ‘a successful
piece of science that serves a community of scientists as a model for future
work’ (Gutting 1984: 49) – appears there are very few publications and little
22 Communities as the social locus of practice

Figure 2.1 Characteristics of scientific knowledge and of scientific communities at

different stages of the S-shaped logistic curve.
Source: Crane 1972: 172.

social contact among scientists who work within this particular area of
interest. For example, when Einstein wrote his theory of general relativity
there were very few publications about this kind of problem and very few
scientists shared his interest and ideas (Schwartz and McGuinness 1992).
In stage 2, the number of publications increases rapidly, as small groups of
collaborators set up an invisible college, or scientific community, to exchange
ideas, share experiences and subsequently communicate the results. Normal
scientific practice occurs at this stage of development of the scientific commu-
nity as its members develop new theories according to the new paradigm and
publish in academic journals and books. In stage 3 the number of publica-
tions is still growing but most of the major problems associated with this
paradigm have been tackled and the pace of growth in the cumulative
number of publications is decreasing. Explanatory difficulties or the failure
of scientific theories (i.e. anomalies) developed on the basis of the paradigm
usually generate controversy among members of the invisible college.
Increased specialisation causes a decline in membership, and a paradigm
which is overwhelmed by anomalies is usually replaced with a new paradigm.
 Communities as the social locus of practice 23
A handful of scientists of the invisible college set up in stage 2, together with
a number of outsiders, usually initiate a new scientific revolution and set up
a new invisible college or scientific community to undertake normal science
according to a new paradigm. In stage 4 the paradigm that appeared in stage
2 is exhausted. There is a crisis and a further decline in membership of the
invisible college formed in stage 2 (see Figure 2.1).
Until the early 1970s most of the research interest was limited to science
and scientific communities (Kuhn 1970; Crane 1972). The main assumption
underlying the literature was that science generates the knowledge employed
by technologists and that the relationship between science and technology is
unidirectional (Layton 1972, 1977) resulting in a linear model of innovation,
where scientists carry out ‘basic’ research and produce knowledge that is
subsequently used by technologists for RTD work and downstream com-
mercialisation. At the time, three decades ago, the field of history of tech-
nology, in contrast to the field of history of science, was very new (Hughes
1979). Pinch and Bijker (1987: 17) argue that the separation of science from
technology continued until the late 1980s, although the need for a unified
approach to science and technology was evident earlier. For example,
Layton (1977: 210) argued that:

Science and technology have become intermixed. Modern technology

involves scientists who ‘do’ technology and technologists who function
as scientists . . . The old view that basic science generates all the know-
ledge which technologists then apply will simply not help in understanding
contemporary technology.

Nowadays scientists and technologists are increasingly enmeshed in a sym-

biotic relationship as academics increase collaboration with practitioners
who share the same kind of problems and compete for the same resources.
As will be discussed in detail in the next chapter, a number of non-linear
innovation models in the past decade or so have highlighted this shift in the
macro-innovation environment: e.g. Gibbons et al. (1994) in terms of the
dynamics of science and the distributed nature of new knowledge production
and Etzkowitz and Leydesdorff (2000) in terms of a triple helix in university,
industry government relationships.
The boundaries between science and technology are increasingly blurred
today as university-based scientists, together with various practitioners and
other actors from private and public organisations, increasingly create and
share knowledge participating in the construction of new technologies (see,
for example, the Esprit and IST programmes of the European Commission
which have as a main objective to support and enhance the interactions
among large and small firms, universities and government research institutes
in relation to RDT work for ICT). As a result, heterogeneous networks
among a broad range of actors are substantially encouraged since the bring-
ing of different people and institutions together can provide more flexible
24 Communities as the social locus of practice
and effective organisational structures for the sharing of ideas and the
solving of scientific and technological problems.
For these reasons, Geisler (1993: 335) argued more than a decade ago that
the field of university–industry–government relations had witnessed a quiet
revolution in thought and in action since the early 1980s. Global cooperation
between universities, industry and government has gained increased promi-
nence (see also Assimakopoulos 2003). Academics, private sector managers
and government officials are not only promoting such cooperation, but also
rethinking their attitudes and approach to this phenomenon. Science and
technology have a two-way relationship. Science informs and shapes tech-
nology but technology also sets the agenda and provides the stimulus for
much scientific research. As a result, the deterministic view of the impact
that science or technology has on society has been seriously challenged, with
sociologists of technology (e.g. Callon and Latour 1981; Callon and Law
1982; Latour 1991, 2005; Law 1994) arguing that even the technical meaning
of hard technology is socially constructed.
Under these circumstances almost everything is negotiable: who is a
scientist and who is a technologist, what is technological and what is social,
what is certain and what is not, who in the ultimate case can participate in the
controversy of defining what a new technology can and cannot do. In this
sense technology, like science, is a social construct. Therefore an interesting
question is to find models and concepts which can explain the social con-
struction of technological systems. New technological systems are open to
different interpretations from different actors and social groups. This is
particularly true for new computer-based technologies which have a program-
mable nature and an open architecture allowing a considerable degree of
reinvention and adaptation to meet the needs of different designers and user
groups: see, for example, Rogers (1993) and Campbell and Masser (1995)
with regard to GIS innovations discussed in Chapter 5. In this respect two
different concepts of socio-technical change are of particular importance.
These are the social constructivistic model of technological stabilisation and
the concept of the technological community. The former is discussed below
and the latter is discussed in the next section.
Pinch and Bijker’s (1987) social constructivistic model of the evolution of
a new technology makes use of the main concept of relevant social group to
explain how artefacts take the form that they do. They argue that different
social groups have different interests in the development of a technical
artefact. As a result, in the early stages of the evolution of an artefact,
alternative designs are produced which try to solve different problems and
fulfil different needs. In later stages of technological development, because
of social, technical, economic and political constraints, there is an increasing
degree of stabilisation as many of these designs disappear in the competition
for survival, while a few of them survive and become successful. The concept
of the relevant social group in the evolution of a technical artefact denotes
institutions and organisations as well as organised or unorganised groups of
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