Hopes, Hypes and Disappointments
The Social Dynamics of Expectations in Innovation - Lessons from Stationary Fuel Cell Technology
Stationary fuel cells have recently attracted high hopes and attention from manufacturers, utilities, investors, policy actors and the media. Stationary fuel cells generate at the same time electricity and heat with applications ranging from large power plants to small household applications. While expectations were rising particularly high around 2001, by now they have become more cautious. The project analyses these expectation dynamics related to stationary fuel cells in the last decade and the specific role of these expectation dynamics for innovation processes.
In general, expectations may have a decisive impact on the pace and direction of technology development. They motivate actors to engage in promising innovation fields, they legitimise the allocation of resources, and they serve to co-ordinate heterogeneous actor groups. At the same time, collective expectations on innovative technologies are often subject to impressive dynamics. Well-known examples are so-called hype-disappointment cycles: expectations get widely accepted and continue to rise for a period of time, but then break down rather suddenly. Often these changes in expectations result in major strategic reorientations of innovation actors.
The project consists of the following steps
- First, expectation dynamics will be retraced by analysing the attention received by stationary fuel cells and the specific expectations related to them. This is conducted for specific arenas, i.e. mass media, professional circles (e.g. manufacturers, utilities), science and the financial community, e.g. venture capitalists.
- Secondly, the interaction between expectations and innovation
processes will be analysed at three levels:
a) we will examine the interfaces and sites by which expectations are mediated within and between various actor groups (media, conferences, foresight departments etc.);
b) we will analyse the role of expectations in the formulation of strategies of different innovation actor groups with a special focus on manufacturers, utilities and venture capitalists;
c) we will analyse how expectation dynamics interact with the course and shape of particular innovation projects. - Thirdly, we compare our results with results of a similarly structured Austrian study on mobile fuel cells. The project is largely based on quantitative and qualitative methods from discourse analysis and on qualitative expert interviews.
Projectpartners
- University of St. Gallen, Institute for Economy and the Environment (IWÖ-HSG), Dr. Rolf Wüstenhagen and team
- ARC Systems Research, Technology Policy Department, Vienna, Austria, Dr. Matthias Weber and team
Duration
01/2007 – 6/2009