The Sustainability, Technology and Innovation Research Group (STIR) ran its annual workshop on 25th June on the topic of Sociotechnical Narratives organised by Anne-Marie Coles, Ian Clarke and Athena Piterou. STIR is a research group within PEGFA.
In her presentation A unicorn factory: The European Innovation Council (EIC) Accelerator, Professor Ruth McNally drew on her experience of working as a Quality Checker for the EIC Accelerator application process. The EIC Accelerator is designed to invest in and support start-ups and SMEs to develop and scale up breakthrough deep tech innovations. The ‘unicorn factory narrative’ is a sociotechnical narrative that acts as both a legitimating and ordering device which shapes the practices of the Accelerator itself and the practices of other actors that interact with it, such as applicants and proposal evaluators. An important trope in the unicorn factory narrative is that of an equity investment ‘gap’ that Europe needs to close in order to keep up with the USA and China and reap the economic benefits of its deep-tech innovations. The unicorn factory narrative permeates the EIC’s Strategic Goals and the criteria of Excellence, Impact and Implementation that are used to evaluate applications to the Accelerator. However, the unicorn factory narrative does not elaborate on the ‘creative destruction’ that deep tech unicorn companies inevitably bring.
Dr Anne Marie Coles and Prof Jin Chan presented Invention and the emergence of new cultural forms: Max Fleischer and the Rotoscope. The rotoscope had a pivotal role in the development of the nascent animation industry and is an example of a technology enabling new forms of media and narrative story-telling. Attempts to introduce the rotoscope in the early Chinese animation industry indicate how new technologies are “rooted in time and place”.
Dr Emanuele Lobina’s presentation on Sustainable organisational efficiency in the water sector sketches an alternative to mainstream notions of organisational efficiency which aims to better reconcile the pursuit of equity, ecological objectives and the economic viability of water service provision.
In Navigating Menopause Journeys via Telehealth Services: the Role of Femvertising Dr Jingxi Huang used experimental data from perimenopausal women based in major cities of China to examine whether advertising with a focus on female empowerment (femversiting) is likely to increase the adoption of telehealth services which could improve health and wellbeing.
Doctoral student Allen Duncan used the case of Passivhaus Plus certified housing in the UK to discuss the very early stages of sustainable niche formation and potential interactions with the UK housing regime. His presentation Mapping a pathway from pre-niche to niche: the case of Passivhaus Plus in the UK considered the differences in policy narratives about housing between the UK and mainland European countries and identified critical points for niche development.
In Framing the climate-crisis: a long term view Dr Ian Clarke addressed how our understanding of time is socially constructed and differs across cultures and historical periods. The concept of the Holocene Era holds advantages over our current history/pre-history understanding and the recently proposed Anthropocene by tracing the origins of climate threatening human behaviour.
The workshop discussion focused on themes such as the decline of grand narratives regarding technoscientific progress, temporality in relation to the question of climate crisis, relations between narratives and visions/imaginaries, contrasts between biomedical and feminist narratives in menopause as a life stage transition, the use of sociotechnical narratives as tools of legitimation in policy-making, narratives linked to the promotion of sustainable technologies and their use as promotional tools. The question arises on whether researchers in innovation studies need new narrative forms to address their research questions. Finally, the participants reflected on the career narrative of Dr Anne-Marie Coles and her contributions to science, technology and innovation studies.
