On the Identity of Technological Objects and User Innovations in Function

ON THE IDENTITY OF TECHNOLOGICALOBJECTS AND USER INNOVATIONS IN

FUNCTION

PHILIP FAULKNERJOCHEN RUNDE

University of Cambridge

Recent research on user innovation has concentrated on changes in the physical formof the objects concerned to the neglect of changes in their intended use or function. Inthis paper we advance a theory of the technical identity of a technological object thatgives due weight to both its form and its function, and we use this theory to categorizedifferent forms of technological change and to unpack some neglected aspects ofuser-driven innovations in function.

One of the most intriguing aspects of recentstudies of the pathways and processes by whichnew technological objects emerge has been thefinding that, under certain conditions, users canplay a decisive role in the initial creation ofinnovative products, as well as their subsequenttake-up and diffusion (Baldwin, Hienerth, & vonHippel, 2006; Franke & Shah, 2003; Franke, vonHippel, & Schreier, 2006; Hienerth, 2006; Luthje,Herstatt, & von Hippel, 2005; Morrison, Roberts, &Midgley, 2004; Shah, 2006; von Hippel, 1998, 2005).The kinds of issues addressed by these au-thors—how user innovations arise, why individ-uals are induced to participate in “innovationcommunities,” what “lead users” role is—havegenerated a range of important insights into theinnovation process and the management oftechnological change by firms. Yet in one impor-tant respect this literature has so far providedonly a partial account of the possibilities thatexist for user-driven innovation, for in concen-

trating on “hardware” innovations—that is, onchanges in form of the objects concerned—it ne-glects the importance of innovations in the useto which an existing object is put (e.g., using anelectric toothbrush as a shower-head descaleror a digital camera as a scanner to create doc-uments that can be transported electronically).The present paper is intended to address thisgap in the literature.

We divide what follows into two halves. In thefirst half we develop a theoretical account of the“dual” nature of technological objects, buildingon elements of the theory of social reality set outby the philosopher John Searle (1995, 1999, 2001)and the transformational model of social activ-ity (TMSA) proposed in realist social theory bysuch authors as Archer (1995), Bhaskar (1979),and Lawson (1997, 2003). We begin by appropri-ating some of Searle’s ideas about assignmentsof function, which we use to arrive at an accountof the basic nature of technological objects andwhat we call their “technical identity.” We thenprovide an overview of the TMSA, which wedevelop and present as an abstract representa-tion of the organization of society that capturesthe structured and processual but neverthelessnondeterministic or “open” aspect of social af-fairs. We next combine the material introducedin the first two sections to arrive at a realisttheory of technological objects and how they fitinto the social world.

In the second half of the paper we use thetheory just described to address the question oftechnological change and user-driven innova-tions in function in particular. We present a case

We are grateful to Ismael Al-Amoudi, Rick Colbourne,Nathan Crilly, Mark de Rond, Florian Ellsaesser, Raghu Ga-rud, Matthias Holweg, Matthew Jones, Clive Lawson, PaulLewis, Michael Lounsbury, Kamal Munir, Katharine Norman,Wanda Orlikowski, Adam Power (DJ Rusty), Peter Sklair, JimUtterback, John Waiting (DJ Ting), and Hugh Willmott. Weare also grateful to the participants at the OTREG seminarat Imperial College London, the Workshop on Notions ofPractice held at Darwin College, Cambridge, and the Cam-bridge Realist Workshop, and to the editor and five anony-mous referees for helpful comments on earlier drafts of thispaper. Thanks also to Adam Power and Thalia Sklair (DJThalia) for their expert demonstrations of some of the tech-niques of turntablism, and to Numark, Panasonic, andVestax for permission to reprint images of their products.

� Academy of Management Review2009, Vol. 34, No. 3, 442–462.

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study of a recent episode of technologicalchange—the transformation of the gramophoneturntable into a musical instrument in hip-hopmusic and its subsequent impact on digitalplayers. This account provides the backgroundfor the development of both a general concep-tion of technological change consistent with ourearlier theory of technological objects and somepropositions relating to user-driven innovationin the use to which objects are put. We closewith some concluding thoughts.

FUNCTION, FORM, AND TECHNICAL IDENTITY

Given how deeply our taken-for-grantedworld is impregnated by technological objects,it is easy to assume that there is nothing partic-ularly difficult or mysterious about the nature oftheir existence.1 Yet there is more to the ontol-ogy of such objects than meets the eye. Considerwhat is required to make an object a token ofsome particular type of technological object,such as a 35mm camera. Physical form is clearlyimportant. For something to be a 35mm camera,it must generally possess at least a lens, view-finder, shutter release, and film compartment.But the appropriate physical form is not suffi-cient, and this is because technological objectsare also partly constituted by their having a use,or function, of some kind. A 35mm camera, forinstance, is an instrument for capturing still im-ages, a telephone for communicating verballyacross distances, a watch for measuring time,and so on. Technological objects therefore havea dual nature (Kroes & Meijers, 2006; Meijers,2000) in being constituted by both physical formand social function.

In order to flesh out these ideas and to de-velop an account of the dual nature of techno-logical objects, we borrow some concepts fromJohn Searle’s theory of social reality. In describ-ing the ontology of what he calls “institutionalfacts,” Searle attributes a prominent role to ourability to assign functions to objects or otherkinds of entities. While Searle focuses on somemore complex manifestations of this ability,such as pieces of paper that function as money

or a raised arm that counts as a vote, we believethat it is also central to fixing and sustaining theidentity of the technological objects that we aresurrounded by. Our point of departure, then, isthat the function of a technological object flowsfrom an agentive function assigned to objects ofthat type, where agentive functions are func-tions that are imposed on entities in pursuit ofthe practical interests of human beings.2

If the function of a technological object indeeddepends on an assignment of agentive functionto objects of a certain type, this raises the ques-tion of who it is that does the assigning. Weproceed on the basis that agentive functions aregenerally assigned by social groups whosemembers’ activities contribute—perhaps con-sciously but more generally as an unintendedconsequence of those activities—to sustainingthe function of the object concerned. For estab-lished technologies—those that have achievedstabilization and closure in the sense of the lit-erature on the social construction of technology(SCOT; Pinch & Bijker, 1987)—these groups willtypically include designers, manufacturers, re-tailers, and users, as well as third parties whomight not be directly implicated in the produc-tion, sale, or use of the object but who recognizeand assign the same function to it. The size ofthe group concerned will vary. Where the objectis one that is used to the same end in manydifferent localities (e.g., spoons, combs, andchairs), the group will be large, containingmany and possibly even all members of society.In other cases the group will be far smaller—forexample, where specialized tools are used incircumstances that touch the lives of only a re-stricted few.

For new forms of technological object or forcases in which existing technological objectsare used in a new way, the group assigning thefunction may initially be very small, includingno more than those responsible for the innova-tions concerned. In many cases the assignmentsof function involved remain restricted to thesegroups, perhaps disappearing altogether after aperiod of time. In other cases a new assignmentof function may spread by being adopted by

1 We use the term technological objects rather than themore common technological artifacts to accommodate thepossibility that the objects in question may be naturallyoccurring as well as manmade, such as when a hollow reedis used as a straw.

2 Nonagentive functions, as distinct from agentive func-tions, are functions that we assign in our theoretical descrip-tions of naturally occurring phenomena, such as when wesay that the function of the heart is to pump blood throughthe body.

2009 443Faulkner and Runde

larger groups, even if often in ways that involvedisagreement and conflict, as well as commer-cial, cultural, and other pressures, that lead theeventual form, function, and other associatedmeanings of the object to develop very differ-ently from what the original innovators mayhave had in mind (Bijker, 1995; Bijker, Hughes, &Pinch, 1987; Kline & Pinch, 1996).

As far as the physical form of technologicalobjects is concerned, it is crucial that in order forthe functions assigned to them to be sustained,those objects must generally possess the physi-cal characteristics and capabilities required toperform the functions concerned. Of course, ob-jects that have a particular function assigned tothem often vary considerably in the precise de-tails of their physical characteristics (Mitcham,1994: 180–181). We accordingly take a “familyresemblance” view of technological objects, rec-ognizing that many objects have definite com-mon physical features and capabilities on thebasis of which they can be grouped as tokens ofthe same type, even when there may be no sin-gle set of physical features that is shared by allof them. In most cases the object concerned willhave these features by design. But this is notalways so, such as where a naturally occurringobject becomes an item of technology or whenan object designed with one purpose in mindsubsequently becomes used for another. Fur-thermore, the degree to which different func-tions require specific physical characteristicsof the relevant object may vary considerably.Contrast, for example, the constraints imposedon the physical form of an object in order tofunction as a digital camera as compared witha paperweight.

To capture the coming together of form andfunction in technological objects, we henceforthspeak of particular types of object as possessinga technical identity within a social group—something that flows from the combination oftheir physical form and the use to which theyare put within that group. Thus, the technicalidentity of an object such as a 35mm camera, forthe social group in which that identity holdscurrency, is of a portable device possessing alens, viewfinder, and so forth that is used tocapture still images. Note that it is quite possi-ble for the same physical object to possess morethan one technical identity. There are two mainpossibilities here. The first arises where differ-ent social groups, possibly intersecting, assign

different functions to the same object, such asthe group that uses nail files for manicures andthe group that uses them to pick locks. The sec-ond typically arises within social groups andreflects what we call “nested assignments offunction,” where narrower, more specific assign-ments of function are assigned to objects that, ata more general level, are also assigned abroader function. An example of nested assign-ments of function would be the class of objectsthat serve as off-road racing bicycles being asubset of a wider class of objects that serve asracing bicycles, which is itself a subset of a stillwider class of objects that serve as bicycles, andso on.

THE TRANSFORMATIONAL MODEL OFSOCIAL ACTIVITY

We now turn to locating technological objects,understood in the way just described, as part ofsocial reality more widely. In order to do so, wemust first outline our preferred theory of socialreality. We devote this section to this task, draw-ing on recent contributions to realist social the-ory by Archer (1995), Bhaskar (1979), and Lawson(1997, 2003), among others. One of the principalinsights of this literature is that human activi-ties and social structure are different kinds ofthings, however much they may be bound upwith and presuppose each other. This insighthas a central role to play when we come toincorporate technological objects into our ac-count of social life in the next section, mostnotably in enabling us to separate the humanpractices in which these objects are implicatedfrom the social rules that contribute to constitut-ing and sustaining such practices.

Starting at a very abstract level, we take thesocial realm to be that domain of phenomenathe existence of which depends on the existenceof human beings. We focus on three key compo-nents of this realm: human agency, social struc-ture, and the relationship between the two. Hu-man agency involves the existence of humanbeings with various capacities and dispositionsand who engage in various forms of activity. By“capacities,” we mean abilities, such as ourability to apply reason to our affairs, to learn anew language, and to imagine future states ofaffairs. Dispositions include such things as ourpropensities or inclinations to act in certainways, such as to tell the truth, to work hard, and

444 JulyAcademy of Management Review

to avoid pain. Human activities are then thepart-product of human capacities and disposi-tions in operation, and they range from deliber-ate actions based on conscious reasoning to rou-tine behavior based on tacit knowledge.

Social structure consists of social rules, rela-tions, positions, and the like that both enableand constrain human activity. Take the case ofsocial positions, such as CEO in a public com-pany, airline pilot, or school teacher. Each ofthese positions involves various roles, rights,and duties, the performance of which is gener-ally associated with and expected of the peoplewho occupy them. And it is in providing a locusof these roles, rights, and duties, both for incum-bents and third parties, as well as in indicatingwhat kind of behavior is discouraged or ruledout by them, that such positions inform and gov-ern human activity. Furthermore, and contraryto the image that emerges from rational choicemodels in which actors are portrayed as at alltimes engaged in conscious deliberation, wecontend that one of the most striking features ofsocial life is the extent to which human activi-ties take the form of routines that are enactedwithout much in the way of conscious thought.The pervasiveness of routines is indicative ofthe “pull” that social structure in general andsocial rules in particular have on human activ-ities, even where, as we explain below, the rulesin question have not been directly internalizedby the actors concerned.

Two key features of the theory we are advo-cating are that human agency and social struc-ture are recursively organized and that struc-tural reproduction is a generally unintendedconsequence of human action. The first is cap-tured by what Giddens (1984) calls the “dualityof structure”—that social structure is constantlyreproduced as an ongoing consequence of hu-man activities, where those same activities pre-suppose the very structures that are being repro-duced. The second is captured by what Bhaskar(1989: 92–93) calls the “duality of praxis”—thatwhile human activities are generally con-sciously directed at intended ends, their contri-bution to structural reproduction is generallyunconscious and unintended. Thus, by fillingthe position of CEO, airline pilot, or schoolteacher and by performing the various roles andduties associated with that position, current in-cumbents contribute to the reproduction of thesepositions and their associated practices and, to

the extent that they innovate and depart fromexisting norms, perhaps also to their transfor-mation over time.

In the next section we show how the technicalidentity of the technological objects that sur-round us depends on the link between certainkinds of social rules and routinized practices, orwhat we simply call “routines.” It is thereforenecessary to develop in more detail a concep-tion of this link consistent with the broader per-spective on social organization provided by theTMSA. By “social rules,” we mean generalizedprocedures of action that are expressible as in-junctions of the form “if X in situation C, do Y,”where “do” is to be interpreted as a placeholderfor phrases such as “this counts as,” “take this tomean,” “refrain from,” and so on.3 These rulesare sustained by virtue of being accepted byand implicated in the activities of members of asocial group (where, in the limit, a group mayconsist of just one individual), often in ways thatrequire some kind of interdependence betweentheir actions. A notable feature of social rules istheir normative force—namely, that in the groupin which the rule holds, if it is the case that X insituation C, then one ought to do Y. An importantsource of this force is the possibility that sanc-tions will be levied against individuals who failto conform to the rule, since in breaking a rulean individual can be judged to have actedwrongly or inappropriately.4

Notwithstanding the possibility that individu-als will act in contravention to some social rule,the existence of normative procedures of actionwithin groups of individuals implies regulari-ties in the actions of those individuals. Indeed,the prevalence of such regularities in humansocial life is one indicator, as noted earlier, ofthe “pull” that rules exert on our actions. Wedefine behavioral regularities as one or a seriesof actions regularly performed by individuals,and we use the term routines to refer to behav-ioral regularities that are conditioned by some

3 The “if X” and “in situation C” parts of the injunction are,of course, sometimes suppressed in ordinary language, as instatements such as “publish or perish” or “keep left.”

4 The self-imposed rules followed by singleton groupscontaining just one individual also bear normative force,although here the sanction will necessarily be some form ofself-imposed punishment or, more commonly, the unease,remorse, or guilt felt when these rules are violated.


social rule.5 Since routines in our definition area subset of behavioral regularities, our accountleaves room for regularities in the behavior ofindividuals that do not issue from preexistingsocial rules—for example, when members ofsome group simply fall into doing something ina particular way, such as congregating at a par-ticular table at lunch. Here the regularity is notthe causal product of any preexisting rule, atleast at first, although a rule may quicklyemerge over time, and it will be noticed if agroup member violates it by sitting at anothertable, arriving at the “wrong” time, and so on.

In order to understand the relationship be-tween routines and social rules, it is useful todistinguish three ways that rules may contrib-ute causally to the determination of behavior.The first and most obvious is where people fol-low rules in a deliberate, conscious way, suchas the novice who attempts to comply with theinstructions given by a tennis coach, or when wefollow the instructions in a computer manual ora cookbook. This case is perhaps the least inter-esting in the present context, since people whoare engaging in routine behavior are typicallynot following rules in this manner. We generallydo not need explicit rules, manuals, and so ononce activities have become routine. Indeed,routines are widely regarded as an expressionof tacit knowledge—that is, of knowledge orskills that are deployed without much in theway of conscious engagement and that peoplemay not always be able to state in propositionalform (Cohen et al., 1996: 658; see also Cohen &Bacdayan, 1994, and Lazaric, 2000).

The second possibility, then, is where peoplehave learned and internalized rules in a waythat the rules are no longer at the forefront of theconscious mind when implicated in action.Rules of this kind are often recoverable by theconscious mind (Lawson, 1997: 178–179). For ex-ample, a jazz musician might be able to cast hermind back and recall the rules of particular

scale substitutions that she had once learned ina discursive way but that have since become soingrained that she can improvise in accordancewith them without thinking about it (Sudnow,2001).

The third possibility, emphasized by Searle(1995: 127–147) under the heading “backgroundcausation,” is that routines may be a manifesta-tion of people’s capacity to behave in ways ap-propriate to particular rule structures, but thesecapacities do not necessarily involve “knowing”those rules consciously or even subconsciously.6

That is to say there may be cases in whichpeople behave in the appropriate way withoutdrawing on rules that have been internalized inany way. The rules in question neverthelesshave a causal role insofar as they have to be insitu in order for people to develop the capacitiesto behave in ways that are appropriate to them.Rules of grammar are a good example here,which many people are able to conform to with-out being able to articulate them or, indeed,without ever having had occasion to reflect onthem in a conscious way.

On the conception of social rules and routinesthat we have set out, social rules are ontologi-cally distinct from the routines they govern. Rou-tines are forms of human activity, whereas so-cial rules reside at the level of shared attitudesand normative commitments, even when peopleonly become aware of them when they havebeen breached. Our distinction between rou-tines and rules, thus, is similar in some respectsto the distinction between the performative andthe ostensive aspect of routines proposed byFeldman and Pentland (2003, 2005). Furthermore,while routines are usefully described as a formof rule-governed behavior, we cannot attach pri-ority to social rules over the routines that issuefrom them. The first point to note in this respectis that social rules do not act deterministically,since rules only ever dictate what should, couldusefully, or ought to be done in particular cir-

5 Note that in our definition routines are a manifestationof human activity, rather than a potentiality or a capacity.On this point we part company with commentators such asHodgson (2008: 19), who regard routines as “stored behav-ioural capacities or capabilities,” which, as such, may neverbe exercised. Further, in our definition routines involve notone but two kinds of regularity—namely, the regularity cap-tured by the “if X do Y” part of the rule being enacted and theregularity that arises from the repeated enaction of the rule.

6 Searle defines the background as the set of noninten-tional or preintentional capacities that allow intentionalmental states to function. We do not attempt to justify ouradoption of Searle’s thesis of the background here, save tosay that it and similar ideas have wider currency in philos-ophy—for example, in the later work of Wittgenstein (1953)and in Bourdieu’s (1990) notion of the “habitus.” See alsoFotion (2000), Searle (2001: Chapter 2), Runde (2002), andNightingale (2003).


cumstances, rather than what will be done. Thesecond point is that not only are routines theproduct of social rules, even if only indirectly viathe route identified by Searle, but that the main-tenance of those rules also depends on the rou-tines that may issue from them. That is, onceestablished, social rules condition routines,while these same routines contribute to the (un-intentional) reproduction and possible transfor-mation of the rules that shape them.

The distinction we drew earlier between rou-tines and other types of behavioral regularitiesis useful because it allows us to say somethingabout the way in which social rules come about.In many cases, of course, rules are the product ofdeliberate design, such as the button-pushingsequences inscribed into digital equipment thathave to be followed closely in order to produceparticular results. Yet in other cases social rulesemerge spontaneously, without being intendedby any individual or organization—for instance,where a social rule emerges out of what wassimply a behavioral regularity as per our earlierlunchtime table example. Once such regulari-ties become accepted as being the appropriateway to act in that sort of situation, they start toengender social rules with normative force,which may then pass on and/or be taught toothers. Thus, while we have been focusing onthe reproduced, and to this extent stabilizing,quality of routines, we do not deny that routinesmay change, be this in response to exogenous orendogenously generated pressures (Feldman,2000; Feldman & Pentland, 2003, 2005). We comeback to this point below.

IMPORTING TECHNOLOGY

We are now in a position to extend the TMSAjust described by incorporating into it the con-ception of technological objects presented earli-er.7 In so doing we develop an account of thesocial structure that underpins our relationshipswith technology and that is reflected in our rou-tinized practices when we interact with technol-ogy.

Our starting point is the notion of an assign-ment of agentive function that we argued ispartly constitutive of technological objects.

From the perspective of the TMSA, assignmentsof function should, we contend, be understoodas social rules. Recall that we defined socialrules as generalized procedures expressible bysuitable transformations of the formula “if X insituation C, do Y,” where these rules are sus-tained by virtue of being accepted by and impli-cated in the activities of members of a socialgroup. With regard to technology, the assign-ment of function to a particular type of techno-logical object is one such procedure, expressibleas an injunction of the form “objects with such-and-such physical characteristics are for thispurpose within such-and-such situation.”

Consider a technological object such as a mi-crowave oven. According to our earlier account,for an object to qualify as such a device, it mustpossess the physical characteristics required toenable people to heat food by microwave radi-ation, and there must be an assignment to thattype of object of the function of enabling peopleto heat food. We suggest that this assignment offunction is a type of social rule, expressible asan injunction of the form “an object comprising acooking chamber, a revolving tray, a magnetron,and a waveguide has the function of enablingpeople to cook food.”8

Locating our theory of technological objectswithin the TMSA in this way makes it possible toexpand on some aspects of our earlier account.The first point here is that the assignment ofsome function to an object does not require themembers of the group concerned to think of thatobject explicitly in terms of its components orthe function assigned to it. Typically, we just seea microwave oven, rather than a rectangular ob-ject made of plastic, glass, and metal to which wethen consciously attribute the function of allowingus to heat food. This suggests that, in general, wedo not actually consciously apply rules to objectsin order to recognize and interact with them in theappropriate way but, rather, that we have eitherinternalized the rules as tacit knowledge or elsedeveloped capacities or dispositions to act in ac-

7 Lawson (2008) offers an alternative route to incorporat-ing technology within the TMSA.

8 We suppress the qualifier about the context in which therule applies. It has been suggested to us that the assignmentof function here might be characterized as a convention asmuch as a social rule. Our response to this is that a conven-tion is a rule too, but a special kind in which the rule issustained by virtue of everyone expecting everyone else toconform to it, everyone expecting everyone else to expecteveryone else to conform to it, and so on.


cordance with the relevant rule structures. Ofcourse, there are exceptions—notably, when theassignment of function to an object is new to us orhas recently changed. In such cases the consciousmind is likely to have a role to play in our engage-ment with or employment of the object. But as timegoes by, the subconscious mind tends to take overand the assignment of function becomes part ofour tacit rather than discursive consciousness.

The TMSA also makes clear the recursive na-ture of the relationship between assignments offunction to an object and our use of that object insome activity—that the social rules and the rou-tines they facilitate are at once a condition forand a consequence of the other. Further, as so-cial rules, assignments of function exhibit nor-mativity. Once an assignment of function to acertain type of object takes hold and becomesestablished in a particular group, it becomes amatter of general policy—a social rule with nor-mative force. Can we be said to break ruleswhen this amounts to no more than our actingcontrary to certain background dispositions?Yes, because there is often a clear sense inwhich we can be wrong about things, evenwhere we are unable to articulate the relevantrule (e.g., where we can see clearly that there issomething wrong with the grammar of a sen-tence but can’t identify the rule or rules broken).And for most of the technological objects that weencounter during our lives, the relevant rulesalready exist, and we learn to behave in accor-dance with them, either in the process of grow-ing up or when we encounter new technologieswe have not come across before.

This completes our theoretical account of theontology of technological objects and how suchobjects come to be the familiar things that makeup so much of our taken-for-granted world. Wehave argued that the identity of technologicalobjects is underdetermined by their physicalcharacteristics—that in addition to their mate-rial form there is an inherently social aspect tothe identity of such objects that flows from theuse to which they are put within a social group.The groups in question vary in size and may beso large as to include almost everyone. We haveattempted to demonstrate how the continuedmaintenance of the technical identity of techno-logical objects depends on the relevant assign-ments of function being continuously confirmedby and sustained in the routinized practices ofthe members of the group concerned. And, as we

have just observed, the technical identities oftechnological objects contribute to constitutingthe activities in which they are implicated.

AN ILLUSTRATIVE CASE: A BRIEF HISTORYOF TURNTABLISM

Before we move on to address the subject oftechnological change and user-driven innova-tion, we first consider a recent episode of tech-nological change that provides a rich source ofillustration of various aspects of our theoreticalaccount. The object at the center of this episodeis the phonograph turntable, and the story werelate concerns its transformation from a play-back device into a musical instrument in its ownright. The story has two parts, the first coveringthe transition from pure DJing to turntablism inhip-hop music and beyond and the second cov-ering the subsequent development of digitalplayers specifically designed to allow users toperform various techniques associated with“classical” turntablism. For those unfamiliarwith the term, a turntablist, as distinct fromsomeone who uses it strictly in its playback ca-pacity, uses the turntable to create new soundsand music by physically manipulating vinylrecords under a turntable stylus, in conjunctionwith an audio mixer.

The idea of using turntables as sound-generating devices in larger musical perfor-mances is not a new one, having been pioneeredby the avant-garde composer John Cage (1939)and, during the 1940s, the father of musique con-crete, Pierre Schaeffer (Hodgkinson, 1987).9 How-ever, it was only with the activities of DJs asso-ciated with the emergence of hip-hop music inthe Bronx in New York during the 1970s that theconception of the turntable as a musical instru-ment in its own right became widespread (Brew-ster & Broughton, 1999; Demby, 2003; Schloss,2004; Souvignier, 2003; White, 1996). In the ac-count that follows, we therefore concentrate onthe more recent history of the turntable emanat-ing from the hip-hop community (see Newman,2003, and Souvignier, 2003, for histories of theturntable per se, and Chang, 2005, Kitwana,

9 Contemporary exponents of the turntable in the experi-mental music community include Christian Marclay (seehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v�4yqM3dAqTzs) and Mar-tin Tetreault (see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v�D0PeXeNllro).


2002, and Rose, 1994, for social histories of hip-hop).

A key early innovation on the road to turnta-blism, attributed to the British dance hall DJJimmy Savile in 1946, was the idea of using twoturntables at once to reduce the gap betweensongs while records were changed. This ideareached its full expression—the gap betweensongs disappearing entirely—with the tech-niques of slip-cuing and seamless mixing pio-neered by Francis Grasso in the late 1960s (Sou-vignier, 2003: 115–117). Seamless mixing, in turn,opened the way to the practice of extending thebreakbeat, introduced by Clive Campbell (KoolDJ Herc) in the 1970s. The breakbeat is the part ofa song, often considered its most danceablepart, in which percussion dominates for a fewbars. Campbell’s innovation was to extend thebreakbeat by using two copies of the samerecord on two turntables, and repeating it byalternating between the turntables, starting thebreakbeat section on one record immediatelyafter it had finished on the other (Newman, 2003:7). This technique was subsequently refined byJoseph Saddler (Grandmaster Flash), who, withthe aid of a homemade mixer and cuing device,perfected what he called the “Quick Mix” (oth-erwise known as “back cuing” or “breakbeatcutting”)—the technique of seamlessly loopingthe breakbeat part of a song (Chang, 2005: 111–114; Rose, 1994: 53–54).

These innovations, especially the technique ofbreakbeat cutting, were a defining influence onwhat became breakdancing and the collage,“cut-and-paste” aesthetic that informed the de-velopment of hip-hop music (although by the1980s most of the cutting and pasting would bedone via samplers rather than through manipu-lating turntables, albeit without disturbing thetradition’s respect for its DJ/turntablist roots[Schloss, 2004]). Yet the development that prob-ably more than any other led to the notion of theturntable as a distinct musical instrument in itsown right was the advent of “scratching”—atechnique discovered by the teenage DJ Theo-dore Livingston (Grand Wizzard Theodore) in1977. Livingston found that by dragging a recordback and forth under the stylus on one turntable,he could generate a rhythmic scratching soundthat could be juxtaposed against and used tocomplement music playing on the second turn-table. He liked the sound and developed the

technique to the point where he could incorpo-rate scratching into his public performances.

The scratch caught on and its tonal and rhyth-mic possibilities rapidly developed to become adefining ingredient in hip-hop and rap music.But it also began to cross over into other forms ofmusic, with turntablists joining bands in othergenres and performing a function in many re-spects similar to a second percussionist/colorist.An early and particularly influential instance ofthis trend was the Grammy-winning hit single“Rockit” from respected jazz pianist Herbie Han-cock’s 1983 album, Future Shock, which featureddistinctive contributions from turntablist and DJDerek Howells (Grandmixer D.ST). Turntablismcontinued to grow and develop through the1980s and 1990s, to the extent that it now has afirmament of virtuoso stars in its own right, “bat-tling” contests, conventions, and dedicated web-sites (see, for example, the links at http://www.hiphop-directory.com and http://www.ukhh.com). A dazzling array of practices andtechniques have emerged to become standardparts of the turntablist’s skillset (e.g., the “tear,”“flare,” and the “crab,” which are achieved bythe technique of “transforming” or chopping upthe basic or “baby” scratch sound by manipulat-ing the mixer in a variety of ways).

Of course, the move toward using the turnta-ble as a musical instrument was not embracedby all and even actively resisted in some quar-ters. As Joseph Saddler recounts:

In 1973, nobody was prepared to put their hand onthe turntable and move it in a back and forthmotion. . . . DJs hated my guts. I was called every-thing from an idiot to a ruiner of records (quotedin Faraone, 2007).

There was resistance, too, thirty years on,when it was only after being twice rejected andhaving had to negotiate a special study groupset up to consider the matter that Stephen Web-ber was allowed to introduce what has sincebecome a highly popular turntable lab at theBerklee College of Music (Hayes, 2004; Muther,2004; Small, undated). Even then, executive vicepresident of Berklee, Gary Burton, remained un-convinced:

I wasn’t in favor of it, and I’m very skeptical evennow. . . . It just seems to lack a lot of the musicalelements that are important to me. You know, richvariety and harmony. Varied dynamics and moreinteresting rhythm combinations (CBS News,2004).


Nevertheless, the eventual success of StephenWebber’s lab, the publicity it generated (e.g.,Demby, 2003, and the articles quoted above), andthe related work by Webber (2003) and others oncodifying the techniques of turntablism (e.g.,Souvignier, 2003) have played an important rolein bringing turntablism into the mainstream.Thus—and although there are currently indica-tions that the high water mark of turntablismmay have been reached and that the guitar isregaining ground as the instrument of choiceamong younger musicians and their returningparents (Sherwin, 2007)—there remain all man-ner of rock, pop, nu-metal, and even countrymusic bands that include a turntablist in theirranks; the musicians’ union in Los Angeles nowcounts turntablists among its members (Webber,2003: 103); and a turntablist, Jason Kibler (DJLogic), has even been a featured instrumentalistin a recent cover story in the respected andlargely mainstream jazz monthly Downbeat(Murph, 2006).

We now turn to what is perhaps the moststriking aspect of the episode we have de-scribed so far—namely, that the physical form ofthe technological object centrally implicated init, the phonograph turntable, remained almostcompletely unchanged. The turntable of choicein the DJ community is the Technics SL-1200,manufactured by the Matsushita corporation,which was first released as a standard hi-fiturntable in October 1972. Its key attribute froma DJing perspective—one that gave it a crucialadvantage over most other turntables availableat the time—was that it featured a variablepitch control without which beat matchingwould have been impossible. In addition, itsdirect-drive (rather than belt-drive) mechanismensured high torque and, thus, fast platter ac-celeration, and its unusual weight made it re-sistant to feedback and to the stylus being dis-turbed by vibration. While there have beendifferent versions of the SL-1200 introducedsince 1972, the successive changes have beenrelatively minor and have not amounted to afundamental design change.10 More than 3 mil-

lion units of the SL-1200 have been sold since1972, and the Mark 2 version first introduced in1978 and shown in Figure 1 enjoys an iconicstatus among turntablists not unlike that asso-ciated with early-model electric guitars madeby companies such as Fender and Gibson dur-ing the 1950s and 1960s:

The Technics SL-1200 was the turntable Grand-master Flash and practically every other note-worthy DJ relied on. It became the only game intown. Matsushita didn’t have to advertise the SL-1200 much, demand from professional DJs wasalways there. Nor were they under any pressureto improve or alter the design; they just kept onstamping out turntables and selling them. TheSL-1200MK2 turntable debuted in 1978, but theSL-1200MK3 didn’t arrive until 1989, followed bythe SL-1200M3D in 1997. That’s roughly one up-grade per decade. Technics continued to tinkerslightly with their other turntable modelsthroughout the eighties, but the SL-1200 designwas essentially frozen (Souvignier, 2003: 43).

The dominance of the SL-1200 was in part sus-tained by a form of technological lock-in—a con-sequence of its adoption by early DJs for thereasons given above, the subsequent adoptionby nightclubs who followed the DJs in this re-spect, and the practice of DJs performing onhouse turntables rather than their own. DJing

10 The SL-1200 Mark 2 introduced in 1978—the versionmost widely used in the DJ community—differs from theMark I version in featuring an improved motor and shockresistance, redesigned casing, and the addition of a groundwire, as well the replacement of the original rotary knobpitch control with a slide control. The improved platter

torque and redesigned casing (which brought the weight ofthe turntable up to twenty-seven pounds and thereby madeit considerably less susceptible to vibration than its forerun-ners and many of its competitors) were probably the mostsignificant enhancements from a DJing perspective.

FIGURE 1Technics SL-1200MK2a

a Courtesy of Panasonic.


and turntabilism are disciplines that requireconsiderable practice, something that is mosteffectively done on turntables that have thesame “feel” as those to be used in performances.Anyone serious about becoming a DJ or turnta-blist would therefore have to acquire similarturntables, invariably SL-1200s, for home use.Nightclubs consequently had little incentive tomove to alternative machines on pain of under-mining the performances of DJs who were prac-ticing on SL-1200s. It was clearly also not in theinterests of Technics to rock the boat by makingany significant changes to the SL-1200. In short,quite apart from being widely recognized as ahigh-quality turntable, the SL-1200 acquired thevaluable and self-reinforcing attribute of beingregarded as the standard turntable among DJsand turntablists.11

So much for the first round of innovation in ourbrief history—a vivid example of user-drivenchange that led to a radical change in the func-tion of an existing technological object whileleaving its physical form almost completely un-disturbed. We now turn to the second round,which is in many ways the exact reverse of theone we have just been considering—manufac-turer rather than user led and involving signifi-cant changes in the form of the technologicalobjects involved. The innovation in questionconcerns the development of digital music play-ers made specifically for the DJ market, initiallyin the form of audio CD-based devices and con-tinuing, later, with the emergence of audio file-based players.

Audio CDs were first introduced into the U.S.market in 1983 and had almost completely dis-placed vinyl in the consumer market by theearly 1990s. Some DJs quickly switched to thenew format, taking advantage of the greaterportability and durability it offered. But manyothers, particularly those with an interest inbeat matching, scratching, and so on, did not.One reason for this, particularly in the hip-hopcommunity, was the value that many DJs at-tached to rare recordings that could only befound on vinyl and the “crate-digging” culturethat grew around this (Schloss, 2004; Wilder,

2006). But another, more telling reason, as far asturntablism was concerned, was that theseskills were specific to vinyl and could not bereplicated on CD players. At first, then, CD play-ers were simply not compatible with the prac-tices and techniques that constituted the turnta-blist’s art.

Over time, however, manufacturers began tointroduce “CDJ” players—audio CD players spe-cifically designed for the professional DJ/turntablist. The first professional CDJ scratch-ing deck, American Audio’s Pro Scratch,appeared in 2001, quickly followed by a com-peting product from Pioneer (the CDJ-1000, cur-rently the industry standard), and subse-quently followed by a number of others fromcompanies such as Denon and Numark. Thefirst Technics CDJ, the SL-DZ1200, shown inFigure 2, was introduced in 2004 and was ex-plicitly designed to replicate the look and feelof the classic Technics SL-1200.

A common feature of CDJ machines is a “jogwheel”—a platter that facilitates manual con-trol of the CD and allows users to replicate theaudio effects associated with traditional turnta-blism, including scratching (in the case of theSL-DZ1200, this platter is actually motorized,with torque that is a close approximation of theclassic SL-1200). The more general advantagesof using CDs—size, durability, and, more re-cently, CD burning—thus became available tothe DJ/turntablist, as well as various additional

11 We are grateful to Adam Power (DJ Rusty) for alerting usto this point. The situation we have just described is aconvention in the coordination game sense of Schelling(1960) and Lewis (1969) and is similar to the well-knownlock-in story told by David (1985).

FIGURE 2Technics SL-DZ1200 CDJ Playera

a Courtesy of Panasonic.


digital features not available on standard ana-logue turntables—the ability to store and in-stantly access particular loops, delinked pitchand time shifting, cue point setting, and so on,along with, in some cases, onboard effects suchas distortion, wah, and panning. Furthermore,the CDJ machines do not have to be placedon flat surfaces to function, an advantage thathas been taken to the limit in the Vestax S-1Premium, shown in Figure 3, which allows theturntablist to strap on his or her player and roamthe stage as an electric guitarist might.

Recent years have witnessed audio data files(such as MP3s) emerge to challenge the audioCD as the dominant digital format in the con-sumer audio market. With the ability to bestored, copied, and transferred in much thesame way as any other kind of computer file,audio files further extend the advantages of au-dio CDs in terms of the storage and portability ofmusic, while also allowing DJs to play samplesfrom a variety of nonmusic sources (such asfilms and television shows) and facilitating mu-sic sharing (particularly over long distances viathe internet). For DJs this has meant the adventof a second generation of digital players, theform of which has yet to stabilize. Some of theseplayers, such as the latest (Mark 3) model of theCDJ-1000, are little more than a CDJ to which hasbeen added the ability to play audio files storedon data CDs, flash memory cards, or USB massstorage devices. Other devices, such as Nu-mark’s iDJ2, shown in Figure 4, involve moreradical shifts in form. Although compatible witha variety of storage devices, the iDJ2 does awaywith the CD player altogether and is instead

designed to act as a DJing console for an iPoddigital audio player. A further class of players,such as Stanton’s “Final Scratch” system andNative Instrument’s “Traktor Scratch” system,consists of vinyl emulation software that runs ona desktop or laptop computer, with manual con-trol of the music provided by a standard turnta-ble on which a vinyl record pressed with a dig-ital timecode is played.

The shift from audio CD-based to file-basedplayers is far less dramatic for turntablists thanthe earlier shift from vinyl- to CD-based players,for what is at stake here is simply the format inwhich digital sounds and music are stored,rather than the method of manually controllingthem, as was the case in the move to CD-basedplayers. While the trend in DJing as a whole hasbeen toward these players, it is perhaps tooearly to tell how turntablists will be affected.Certainly, although some virtuoso turntablistslike Richard Quitevis (DJ Q-bert) and RonaldKeys (DJ Swamp) have embraced electronic tools(e.g., in the use of computers, drum machines,samplers, and so on), they retain their tradi-tional turntable setups.

TECHNICAL IDENTITIES ANDTECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE

The appropriation of the turntable as a musi-cal instrument provides a dramatic illustrationof key aspects of our theory of technologicalobjects: that the technical identity of technolog-ical objects is a matter of function as well asform, that form underdetermines function, and

FIGURE 3Vestax S-1 Premiuma

a Courtesy of Vestax.

FIGURE 4Numark iDJ2 a

a Courtesy of Numark.


that functions are assigned to objects by socialgroups of varying sizes. Crucially, according toour theory, the technical identities of technolog-ical objects are a real feature of the social world,sustained by being reproduced in and throughthe routinized practices of the groups in whichthey hold currency. We saw this in how the newtechnical identity of the gramophone turntablehas become institutionalized in the perfor-mances and traditions of the hip-hop communityand, more formally, in music education, profes-sional associations, and specialist publications.That the turntable is a musical instrument is nolonger open to question in many parts of themusic industry and the wider community.

As our brief history of turntablism alsomakes clear, however, to say that technicalidentities are real once they have become es-tablished is not to say that they cannotchange. More than that, our history provides aclear example of how changes in technicalidentities may emanate purely from changesin function. We return to this issue in the nextsection. First, however, we outline a generalconception of technological change consistentwith the theoretical framework developed inthe first part of the paper.

We have argued that the technical identity ofa technological object flows from that object’spossessing a particular form and having as-signed to it one or more agentive functions. Theform-function dichotomy suggests that techno-logical change occurs in one of three ways: (1) achange in the form of objects with a preexistingfunction, (2) a change in the function assigned toobjects with a preexisting form, or (3) some mix-ture of 1 and 2. Perfectly pure cases of 1 and 2 areprobably quite rare in practice, becausechanges in the form of technological objects areusually accompanied by (often subtle) shifts infunction, and vice versa. Category 3 is thereforelikely to be the most common of the three. How-ever, it seems natural to group much of the tech-nological change we experience in category 1,where technological change presents itself aschanges in the form of objects that we use toperform already-established functions. Cate-gory 2 introduces the possibility of technologicalchange even in the absence of any change in thephysical form of the object concerned.

It is evident that the two rounds of innovationdescribed in our brief history of the turntable are

paradigm cases of our two limiting categories.12

The first round, in which the turntable wastransformed from music playback device to mu-sical instrument, is a clear case of the same-form-different-function variety of technologicalchange 2. The innovations in the second round,particularly the CDJ players designed specifi-cally to facilitate turntablists’ existing tech-niques, are an instance of the same-function-different-form variety of technological change 1.Here, manufacturers took as given the new func-tion assigned to the turntable and sought tomodify existing digital playback devices to ac-commodate the practices associated with it.

In conceiving of technological change interms of changes in the form and/or function of atechnological object, we are not suggesting thatevery instance of technological change will al-ter the technical identity of the object concerned.Whether it does so or not will be specific to thesocial group in which the object is used and willdepend on the (usually implicit) judgments ofsameness or difference made by its members.This means, of course, that there is a degree ofarbitrariness in whether or not a new technicalidentity emerges after one or more technologicalchanges and, if it does, exactly where the line isdrawn between the “old” and the “new” techni-cal identity. Indeed, the line may not be com-pletely clear even within a particular commu-nity of users. For example, a subset of users whoare more technically literate and understand theextent of certain underlying changes in form ina same-function-different-form case of techno-logical change may be relatively more inclinedto treat the object in its new form as a new kindthan would lay users who do not have the samedegree of technical understanding.

Nevertheless, experience seems to show thatthere is often considerable agreement onwhether or not technical identities havechanged in the wake of technological change. Inthe first place, much technological change is

12 We do not consider in any detail the third (mixed) cat-egory of technological change involving both changes infunction and form here, both because of limitations in spaceand because this would involve repeating many of the samepoints we raise below. However, the digital video (“VDJ”)players that have appeared with the recent emergence of“video turntablism” (turntablism augmented with synchro-nized and unsynchronized visual imagery using “visualscratching,” “visual beat juggling,” and so on) would likelybe good candidates for a study of this sort.


incremental and usually appears to leave estab-lished technical identities undisturbed. For ex-ample, we found nothing to suggest that any ofthe various changes to the form of the motorizedturntable since it first became established as amusic playback device led users, be they mem-bers of the traditional record-playing or DJ com-munities, to regard it as a different kind of thing.However, in other cases of same-function-different-form technological change, in whichthe changes in form are more thorough, usersare often led quite naturally to treat the old andthe new forms of the technological objects asdifferent kinds of things—for example, in thecases of the shift from piston to jet engines,transistors to integrated circuits, and turntablesto CD players. The same point applies to varia-tions in function. Although an important ad-vance in the art of DJing, taking the turntable outof the parlor and into the dance hall as part of atwin turntable setup did not itself alter the tech-nical identity of the turntable as a music play-back device. Only with the more radical innova-tions of breakbeat cutting, scratching, and thelike did the idea of the turntable as a musicalinstrument take hold.

USER-DRIVEN INNOVATIONS IN FUNCTION

Having set out a conception of technologicalchange consistent with our earlier theory oftechnological objects, we now address the ques-tion of user-driven innovation. As we argued atthe start of the paper, research on this topic hasconcentrated on “hardware” innovations—thatis, changes in form of the objects concerned: kitesurfers building their own harnesses and safetysystems as alternatives to commercially pro-duced products in the case of consumer products(Tietz, Morrison, Luthje, & Herstatt, 2005); hospi-tal surgeons developing or improving pieces ofmedical equipment (Luthje, 2003); and (in the DJcommunity) Joseph Saddler jerry-building a mi-crophone cue into his mixer setup (Chang, 2005:112) in the case of producer products. To theextent that user innovations in function arementioned at all, this has tended to be withrespect to changes in “technique” (Baldwin etal., 2006: 1294–1296; von Hippel, 2005: 30–31)—that is, changes in the way that an object with agiven technical identity is used (e.g., surgeonsdeveloping new procedures or kite surfers per-forming new tricks). Even here, however, such

innovations are typically mentioned only inso-far as they are associated with innovations inform.

From the viewpoint of our own theory,changes in function are as much an instance oftechnological change as changes in form. If so,user-led innovations in function constitute animportant line of research in their own right,with organizational implications over andabove those connected with the changes in formthey may precipitate. Thus, the emergence ofnew techniques associated with the use of anobject such as the rodeo kayak (Baldwin et al.,2006) may attract new users and thereby expandthe market for that object without any concomi-tant changes in form. More dramatically, and aswe have seen in the case of the turntable,changes in function may lead to wholesalechanges in an object’s technical identity, includ-ing the same object having multiple identitieswith possibly far-reaching and deep-seated ef-fects on previously unconnected firms and mar-kets. The questions addressed in the existingliterature on user innovation—how user innova-tions arise, why individuals are induced to par-ticipate in community-based innovation, whatthe role of lead users is—remain relevant here,too, but the focus on innovations in function alsoopens up a variety of new topics and issues,some of which are highlighted in the remainderof this section. We have distilled four proposi-tions, each illustrated by material drawn fromour earlier case study.

Proposition 1: User innovations infunction are advantageous to incum-bent producers.

For manufacturers, user innovations in func-tion that catch on represent the spontaneousemergence of new markets for objects of an ex-isting form. Provided there exist setup costs ofsome kind for potential new producers, thelikely beneficiaries of this additional demand,at least in the short run, are incumbents, whogain what is effectively a windfall, having in-vested nothing in generating these new mar-kets. In the case of the turntable, existing man-ufacturers, particularly Technics, which alsoenjoyed the lock-in effects described above,were able to profit from selling an essentiallyunchanged product to a completely new market.

The scale of the benefits that accrue to man-ufacturers as a result of user innovations in


function depends on the extent to which the newfunction sustains a group of users that is (1)sizable, (2) enduring, and (3) unable to appropri-ate existing instances of the object for use in itsnew function. The importance of the first twofactors is straightforward. While alarm clocksare sometimes used to trigger bombs andstrapped-down MIG jet fighters to extinguish oilfires (Oudshoorn & Pinch, 2003: 1), the additionaldemand such uses generate is unlikely to havea significant impact on the overall size of themarkets concerned. And the more enduring thegroup that assigns the new function, the longermanufacturers will be able to benefit from it,especially if it affords them the time to respondto the innovation—for instance, by offeringslightly updated and improved versions of theproduct tailored to its new function, which maypersuade existing owners to upgrade (e.g.,changing the rotary pitch control on the originalSL-1200 with an easier-to-use and more accurateslide control). Of course, there may also come apoint at which manufacturers start producingnew kinds of technological objects to performthe new function, which may eventually dis-place the original repurposed object. We sawsomething of this with the emergence of thevarious digital players, which have made in-roads into the turntable market and to whichTechnics took some time to respond with its ownCDJ player.

Although both the size and the longevity of thegroup using an object in a novel way are impor-tant determinants of the potential benefits tomanufacturers from user innovation in function,so, too, is the extent to which users already haveaccess to the object and are able to use it in itsnew function. Two points stand out here. First,the greater the overlap between the group as-signing the new function to the object and theobject’s original group of users, the smaller thelikely impact on demand, since users alreadyown or can otherwise access the object con-cerned. Thus, although spoons and combs havelong been used as instruments in musical per-formances, this is unlikely to have significantlyincreased demand for these objects, since mostusers already own the objects concerned. Sec-ond, the greater the durability of the object, thesmaller the likely effect on demand, since dura-bility implies an object that is not rapidly con-sumed in use and that users therefore have noimmediate need to purchase additional units for

use in its new function. Therefore, even if thetwo groups of users are near identical, a newassignment of function to an object may signif-icantly increase demand, provided the objectconcerned is relatively nondurable.

In light of the above, the striking thing aboutthe turntable episode is that the new assign-ment of function generated a sizable new mar-ket for turntables just when the traditional mar-ket was beginning to disappear with theemergence of digital musical players. The chal-lenge to incumbent manufacturers was then tosustain and promote their dominant position inthis new market. In the case of Technics, thiswas achieved by marketing activities, such assponsoring the DMC world championship, whileat the same time keeping changes to the SL-1200to a minimum, making only minor modificationsto a design that is now over thirty years old.Given that this same period coincided with anera of rapid technological development in theelectronic music equipment industry, it wouldbe easy to dismiss the relatively minor changesto the SL-1200 as a symptom of inertia on thepart of a complacent dominant manufacturer.From the point of view of retaining its status asthe industry standard, however, the ploy was arational one. As we have already argued, anyattempt to change its design in any significantway would likely have been self-defeating.

Of course, cases as extreme as the turntable,where a long-established technological objectundergoes a spontaneous change in functionradical enough to change its identity with littleor no change in form, are rare. The more usualcase is where (often unexpected) changes infunction are precipitated by prior changes in theform of technological objects, or in subsidiaryobjects complementary to them. Recent exam-ples here include SMS messaging becoming amajor use of mobile phones; the PC becomingthe gateway to a vast communication and infor-mation-retrieval network, rather than beingused primarily as a local repository for informa-tion, a word-processing tool, and so on; and thecamera becoming more heavily associated withcommunication through the immediate sharingof electronically transported and often dispos-able images, with the advent of digital imaging,rather than the archiving of “kodak moments”associated with predigital photography (Runde,Jones, Munir, & Nikolychuk, 2009). In such casesthe impact on established manufacturers, even


in the short run, is far less certain, for the pre-ceding changes in form suggest a more disrup-tive market environment, with greater opportu-nities for those outside to enter with innovativeproducts.

Proposition 2: Users dominate manu-facturers as sources of innovations infunction.

Although manufacturers have close andlengthy engagements with the technological ob-jects they produce, this is typically spread over adiverse set of activities, ranging from designand manufacture to marketing and distribution.Users, in contrast, typically have a narrower andrelatively more intimate engagement with suchobjects in connection with their use as a meansof achieving particular ends. If so, users arelikely to have a comparative advantage overmanufacturers as a source of innovations in use(thus, Baldwin et al. [2006] report that all of theinnovations in technique in rodeo kayaking overthe period of their study came from users). Ofcourse, many manufacturers seek to explorehow users use and interact with their productsby exposing them to focus groups, testing themin different settings, and so on. Nevertheless,sheer weight of numbers ensures that there islikely to be wider variation among users and thecontexts in which they operate than manufactur-ers can achieve artificially. To this extent, thescope for the emergence of new uses for existingtechnological objects is likely to be far greateramong users than manufacturers of these ob-jects.

The economics of innovation also plays animportant role here. Although incumbent manu-facturers stand to benefit from the discovery ofnew uses for their products (Proposition 1), pro-moting a new assignment of function for an ex-isting object with an established technical iden-tity is something that is likely to requiresignificant investment on the part of the manu-facturers. Once this investment is made, how-ever, the barriers to entry to rival producers arelikely to be relatively low, since it is harder toprotect a novel use of an object than it is a novelform (unless the object benefits from the kind oflock-in effects that benefited the Technics SL-1200, or unless it already has a brand that can betransposed, as in the case of new uses for exist-ing brands of packaged goods [Wansink & Gil-more, 1999]). Further, it may be difficult for man-

ufacturers to promote innovative uses of anobject to a new market segment without disturb-ing that object’s original market. Thus, althoughincumbent manufacturers are likely to profitfrom new assignments of function that emergespontaneously among users, investment innovel use by firms is likely to be discouraged.

On the user side, conversely, the incentivestend to favor innovations in function over inno-vations in form, even given the inertial pull ofwhat is sometimes called “functional fixity” inthe psychological literature (Adamson, 1952;German & Barrett, 2005). The reason for this isthat user innovations in function require none ofthe financial capital and production know-howrequired for the modifications in form that havebeen studied elsewhere in the innovation liter-ature. Rather, the most important input for userswanting to innovate in function is ingenuityand, in the cases in which there is a need todevelop and perfect the associated skills andtechniques, the time and passion to do so. Theseare all resources that the youthful turntablistinnovators, much like the sports enthusiastsstudied by Hienerth (2006) and Baldwin et al.(2006)—the analogue to “lead users” in the user-innovation literature—had available in abun-dance.

Proposition 3: Users are most likely toseek new functions for existing objectswhen an object that would normallybe used for some task is (a) unavail-able, (b) defective, or (c) consideredinappropriate, so users search for analternative object to perform the sameor similar function.

If, as we contend in Proposition 2, users typi-cally possess a comparative advantage in gen-erating innovative uses for objects, it is of par-ticular interest to seek to identify the sorts ofconditions under which they are likely to searchfor alternative uses for existing objects. In someinstances, of course, novel assignments of func-tion are the result of a need arising for which anobject designed with that purpose in mind doesnot yet exist, leading users to search for an ex-isting object capable of performing that functionin a satisfactory way (such as when an electrictoothbrush is used as a shower-head descaler).The more common case, however, occurs whenusers search for a substitute for an object thatserves an existing need, a situation most likely


to arise when the original object is either un-available, defective, or no longer regarded asappropriate to perform its intended task.

In the case of the initial appropriation of theturntable in hip-hop music, the innovation argu-ably arose in a situation marked by the conjunc-tion of two such factors. The emergence of hip-hop and turntablism coincided with a period inwhich the city of New York was close to bank-ruptcy and budget cuts in school music pro-grams drastically reduced access to traditionalinstruments (Rose, 1994: 34). The householdgramophone therefore was often the closestthing to a musical instrument available toyoung people in the communities concerned andso became an obvious outlet for those with mu-sical inclinations searching for an alternative. Itis also significant, however, that the innovationemerged within a culture that celebrated therebelliousness and bricolage that would go onto define hip-hop. As expressed by Joseph Sad-dler:

An instrument is defined as a device with whichto produce a musical sound. I always wanted tocreate music. Traditional instruments was [sic]not what I wanted to use. So growing up in the‘hood I simply chose my own (Saddler, undated).

Thus, an important spur to innovation in thiscase was the fact that traditional instruments,whether available or otherwise, came to be re-garded as overly conventional, and the turnta-ble came to be regarded as an ideal substitute.

Once the search for an alternative object toperform some function has been initiated, thedevelopment of user innovations in function fol-lows a logic that is broadly similar to the trial-and-error problem-solving process described byvon Hippel (2005) in the context of hardware in-novations. In response to the perception of aproblem or need, an innovator hypothesizes thatthe problem may be overcome by using an ex-isting object in a new way. The innovator thentests the proposed solution, amending it in lightof the results and iterating the process until asatisfactory solution is found. Joseph Saddler’sdevelopment of the Quick Mix, which as wehave already noted was a carefully worked-outrefinement of the needle-dropping techniquefirst performed by Clive Campbell (Chang, 2005:112–113), is a good example of this process, asare many of the various subsequent innovationsin turntablist techniques.

Although we have focused on the purposefulaspect of user innovation in function, this is notto deny that chance is also likely to play animportant role in the emergence of new uses forexisting objects. Indeed, in some instances it isaccident, rather than deliberation, that domi-nates, a good example being Theodore Living-ston’s discovery of the “scratch.” Here in his ownwords is what happened:

I can thank my mother for that. I was in my roomplaying music too loud. My mother banged on thedoor, and when she opened the door she waspointing her finger at me, telling me I had to turnthe music down, or turn it off. While she was inthe doorway screaming at me, I had one recordplaying, and was moving the other record backand forth. In a rhythmic motion. And didn’t realizewhat I was doing until she left the room. Once Irealized what I was doing, I experimented withdifferent records. It became the scratch and therest is history (quoted in an interview with ToddSouvignier [Souvignier, 2003: 48]; see also the in-terview with Billy Jam, undated).

This is a fascinating snippet for its emphasison serendipity. However, even here it needs tobe remembered that the elements of chance in-volved would have been of little consequencehad Livingston not been someone able to recog-nize the possibilities thrown up by them. Andthis is something that likely depended veryheavily on his already having considerableskills as a DJ, and his practicing on a two-turntable setup complete with faders and so be-ing in a position to notice the juxtaposition of hisrudimentary scratching against the sound of theother record playing normally (Malone, 2005).

Proposition 4: User innovations infunction provide scripts for manufac-turer-led changes in form.

An intriguing aspect of the turntable episodeis that it illustrates a departure from the conven-tional story of designers setting the pace in“configuring” the users of new kinds of techno-logical objects (Woolgar, 1991). In a suggestivepaper, Akrich (1992) compares designers to filmscriptwriters, with designers attributing specificactivities and responsibilities to the intendedusers of technology and then attempting to “in-scribe” these into the objects concerned. Interms of our theoretical framework, this por-trayal of designers is an appealing one, partic-ularly where the technological object concernedis intended to serve a new or largely unfamiliar


function and for which a market has yet to becreated. Where an existing technological objectis subject to a user innovation in function, how-ever, it is often users who provide designerswith scripts from which to work. This is exactlywhat has been happening in the second roundof innovation described in our case, where,faced with a range of by now established prac-tices and techniques associated with classicalvinyl turntablism, designers in companies suchas American Audio, Pioneer, and Technics haveresponded by developing digital audio playersdesigned to facilitate the performance of ver-sions of those same scripts. Indeed, this is ex-actly how the new Technics CDJ is presented inthe company’s own marketing material:

The Technics SL-DZ1200, the world’s first Direct-Drive Digital Turntable, looks—and more impor-tantly feels—like spinning wax on a classic 1200.The distinctive slip surface on the 10” platter letsyou spin, scratch, break, and otherwise work atrack in a number of formats, including CD, MP3and AAC. Along with its realistic vinyl feel andclassic direct drive, the SL-DZ1200 also lets youstore, playback, scratch and loop sampled mediafrom a removable SD memory card. About the sizeof a postage stamp, these cards store all yourfavorite samples, songs— even whole albums.And although they won’t ever be able to replacevinyl, they’re a whole heck of a lot easier to carryaround than a crate of records. It looks like Tech-nics is about to kick off a whole new era for theDJ—again (Panasonic, undated).

In reversing the conventional story in thisway, with users coming up with scripts that de-signers then read, our account again underlinesthat social structure—particularly existing as-signments of function and the social rules thatunderpin practices in which technology is impli-cated—is an important element of the context inwhich the innovation and subsequent adoptionof new technological objects take place. As thepassage above makes clear, existing socialrules influence both the form and function ofnew products, with manufacturers of digital DJequipment going to great lengths to preserveexisting associations with turntablism, both interms of how the equipment looks and feels (thejog wheel taking the form of a miniturntable)and how it is presented and spoken about (e.g.,“scratching,” when there is, in fact, nothing ofthe kind in a literal sense going on in a digitalenvironment).

As Hargadon and Douglas (2001) argue in the-orizing the notion of “robust design,” the chal-lenge for designers and manufacturers of newproducts is to decide which details of an inno-vation to present as new, which to present asold, and which to suppress altogether. Thesechallenges are likely to be particularly severewhen a product designed to serve an estab-lished function differs radically in form fromexisting devices. Thus, in its description of theSL-DZ1200, Technics downplays the possiblydisruptive effects of CDJ players’ more novelfeatures, to the point of reassuring DJs, particu-larly vinyl “purists,” that new media such asmemory cards “won’t ever be able to replacevinyl.” For Technics, a manufacturer simulta-neously supplying both analogue turntablesand digital players, the difficulties are of coursemultiplied, as witnessed by its demonstratingthe SL-DZ1200 player at the very DMC champi-onship in which contestants are explicitlybarred from using machines of this type.

CONCLUSIONOur aim in this paper has been to contribute

to the literature on user innovation by advanc-ing the idea of user innovations in function. Tothis end, we developed a theory of the technicalidentity of a technological object as somethingflowing from its function as well as its physicalform, and we proposed a corresponding concep-tion of technological change as something thatmay emanate from, and be reflected in, changesin function as well as changes in form. We high-lighted the possibility that such innovationsmight be sufficiently dramatic, where they catchon, to alter or augment the established identitiesof technological objects.

There are many ways in which the account wehave put forward might be developed further. Atthe more concrete level, and staying on the sub-ject of user innovation, it would be useful toexamine technological change that involvescontemporaneous changes in form and functionrather than the limiting cases of “same-form-different-function” and “same-function-differ-ent-form” that we saw in our illustrative case. Aswe noted, shifts in form and function are morelikely to proceed in tandem and in an intercon-nected way, and, therefore, there is a need fordetailed study of the links between user innova-tions in form and user innovations in function.


Second, there is considerable scope for investi-gating more deeply the impact of power on theemergence, coalescence, and possible transfor-mation and dissolution of technical identities.Finally, and while we have said a fair amountabout the meaning of technical objects insofaras this relates to assignments of function, thereare various other ways in which meaning—relating to normative, political, ethical, and aes-thetic considerations, for example—may enterand influence the trajectory and speed of tech-nological change and its diffusion. Again, whilewe touched on these additional avenues ofmeaning in our case study, there is considerablescope for further investigation here.

The theory of technological objects we haveput forward is not restricted to the subject ofuser innovation and might also be fruitfully em-ployed in other areas of organizational research.For example, the theory is likely to be useful inapplied work in which questions of (changes in)the identity of technological objects come to thefore—for example, in areas of marketing, prod-uct design and development (consider the caseof the conception and presentation of hybrid ob-jects such as the iPhone), and the conduct andorganization of work (remember that the newuse of the turntable and the practices associatedwith turntablism are mutually constitutive).

There are also connections to be made withexisting theoretical approaches. For example,there are important links between our theory oftechnical identity and the literature on SCOT(Bijker, 1995; Bijker et al., 1987; Pinch & Trocco,2002), particularly regarding our emphasis onthe interpretation of technological objectswithin social groups. Here we regard our theoryas generally complementary with SCOT, albeitoriented toward a rather different concern:whereas SCOT tends to focus on the historicalprocesses through which particular technologi-cal objects emerge—their “comings into being,”as Hacking (2002: 4) puts it—we have focused onthe general properties of such objects—the “be-ings that become” (Hacking, 2002: 5)—and theconditions of their existence.

To some extent, then, we hope that our theorymight serve as a contribution to the theoreticalgrounding of the kind of studies of the emer-gence of technological artifacts conducted byrepresentatives of SCOT. Further, to the extentthat assignments of function and the technicalidentities they support form part of social struc-

ture, we believe our theory may contribute todeflecting some of the criticism that SCOT hasreceived for underestimating the influence ofsocial structure (Russell, 1986), especially theconditioning effect of social rules (Klein & Klein-man, 2002).

In closing, we would briefly like to draw at-tention to the particular theoretical orientationadopted in this paper—an approach that goesunder the general banner of social ontology. On-tology is the study of the kinds of things thatexist in the world and their possible modes ofexistence, and social ontology is that part ofontology concerned with the social realm. Aftera long period in the shadows of positivism, on-tology is currently experiencing something of aresurgence13 and involves, as we have donehere, taking a step back and reflecting on theproperties and conditions of existence of the en-tities under investigation. There are many rea-sons why stepping back in this manner may beuseful, some of which we hope are reflected inthe paper. Chief among these are gaining clar-ity about the object under investigation, gener-ating categories for theory development, and,given that not all objects of research are equallyamenable to the same analytical tools, provid-ing a basis for making informed choices aboutappropriate research methods. This paper hasbeen a preliminary ontological investigation ofjust one particular kind of social entity—namely, technological objects. We suggest thatthe same sort of approach might usefully beapplied to the many other kinds of objects pos-ited in organization research, such as “institu-tions,” “social networks,” and “organizationalroutines,” to name just three.

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Philip Faulkner ([email protected]) is fellow and college lecturer in economics at St.Catharine’s College, University of Cambridge, and college lecturer in economics atClare College, University of Cambridge. He received his Ph.D. in economics from theUniversity of Cambridge. His research is primarily concerned with issues of social


ontology, including the ontology of technology and the nature of economic decisionmaking.

Jochen Runde ([email protected]) is reader in economics and director of the MBAProgramme at Judge Business School, University of Cambridge, and fellow and direc-tor of studies in management studies at Girton College, University of Cambridge. Hereceived his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Cambridge. His researchinterests include social ontology and the ontology of technology in particular, expla-nation in the social sciences, decision making under uncertainty, and the develop-ment and commercialization of digital technologies.


On the Identity of Technological Objects and User Innovations in Function

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