Session 1: Group 2

Group 2—pace of change: social construction of technology; adopting and adapting to technology

• Ties being formed more quickly
• Implications of tie formation and pace of formation
• Enabling factors—open innovation, collaboration, crowd-sourcing—in order to come up with things that were unfathomable
• Institutions are slow to change; technology is evolving faster so that formal institutions are holding back
• Should we modify the formal institutions to ease innovation and building of networks and collaboration?
• How can we nurture the contributions of collaborations? 
• Competition between closed systems and systems
• Collaborations between corporations and university scientists—benefits?
• Acceleration and constraint of pace of change—what mechanisms can be used?
• Bandwagons don’t really capture varying speeds in different time frames
• Need to explain multiple waves versus within one wave
• Technology changes the way people work together which changes how people use technology
• Co-evolutionary standpoint—focuses on one technology evolution and maps onto multiple factors
• Time, speed, etc
• How do you create metrics?
• Three populations—technology generators, people, and the institutions who use technology
• Focal point: pace of change in technological innovation
• Pace of change in institutions and universities is not increasing, even with heightened productivity and technology
• Why is the pace changing? Better minds, better tools, or better networks?
• Are we now culturally oriented to technology? Does society learn to expect greater technology?
• Are changes superficial for mankind? These changes may determine how we complete certain tasks, but are they fundamentally changing people?
• Matter of incentives, opportunities created
• More innovations due to use of computer to cut across all trades and job—the base number of things that could change increase
• Not necessarily better tools, but more risk allows for more change
• Diversity begets diversity
• Examine how connections are made
• Ex: co-authorships among professors at universities on the same pre-email platform due to ease of connectivity
• Networks: a change in one part leads to change in another so that change follows through the entire system
• Once networks are established, the overall structure and core doesn’t change much. The peripheral groups come and go but the structure stays the same
• Ex: Silicon Valley has several large, core firms that gobble up any successful start-ups
• As pace of change increases, do the incumbents become stronger?