Technology brokering means a strategy for exploiting the networked nature of the innovation process and building new communities around innovative recombinations. The brokering originates from the work of Edison and is lately made famous by Andrew Hargadon and Robert Sutton (1997) in Administrative Science Quarterly (December 1997) and by Andrew Hargadon (2003) in his book. (Please, check my book recommendations).
To narrow my PhD scope, I have lately focused on technology brokering and related models that decribe the processes to search for new ideas and to store them for further use.
The technology brokering process model (please, click the image to enlarge it) is originally based on Hargadon&Sutton's observations how a product design company (originally Ideo ) develops innovative products based on ideas acquired from other industries. This focus on product development can be seen as a limiting factor in the model of Hargadon and Sutton. When reviewing this model in my doctoral seminar, my supervisor, professor Pertti Järvinen
raised an interesting question: "What does brokering mean in scientific work?".
In my ongoing PhD research the open topics are:
- What motivates people to act as a broker? (Step 2: Acquisition)
- Should personal interest expressions be integrated in idea gathering from other industries (in Step 1: Access)? (A HR and empowerment viewpoint ;-)
- Could creative problem solving CPS tools be integrated in the brokering process (for example in Step 3: Storage) to support continuous and systematic idea gathering? (See my related post)
- Which question sets facilitating reflection, informal learning (Marsick & Watkins, 1990) and perspective making/taking (Boland and Tenkasi, 1995) should be integrated to support the brokering process?
- Which technologies supporting brokering are the most appropriate? (I started prototyping in mobile java J2ME, but now I am curious to integrate blog technologies.)
Happy to hear your opinions about the topic :-)
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