Paper short abstract:

This paper examines the role of performativity within technological innovation and its application in the development of technologies through the Maker Movement.

Paper long abstract:

Recent models of the process of technological innovation attempt to incorporate the complex and overlapping activities involved in the development of an emerging technology. These activities entail a great degree of social and technological entanglement, that inform the innovation process. Such models suggest that social mechanisms provide the basis for a dialogue between innovators, new technologies, and markets. It is these social mechanisms which contribute to feedback, iteration and ritual, which constitute the key elements of the process of technological innovation. Through these factors the dialogue and innovation process become 'performative' in nature.

This paper aims to move towards a more performative model of technological innovation. Based on a summary of existing research on models of the innovation process and performativity, it clarifies the performative characteristics of the process of technological innovation, and integrates these characteristics into a newly proposed model. The dynamics of the model and challenges emerging from it are explored, addressing such questions as how the role of affordances maybe examined within the context of performativity.

The validity and applicability of the proposed model is evaluated by reviewing the development and impact of the Maker Movement within the 3D-printing market. This illustrates how end-users participate in the innovation process, inform an emerging technology and play a role in configuring the market. This paper attempts to clarify further the relationship between the material and the social in the process of technological innovation, and to make more explicit the interactions between the overlapping issues that constitute this relationship.