Paper short abstract:

This paper offers an in-depth case study of the biography of an industrial product concept covering a time span of 25 years. The focus is on the role of intermediary objects in the evolving framings and re-framings of the product concept from a ‘cost efficient’ to a ‘carbon reducing' pump.

Paper long abstract:

The work with new product ideas at the socalled 'Front End of Innovation' in manufacturing companies has caught attention as a space where concerns for sustainable transitions may translate into strategies for radical innovation.

In this paper we contribute a case study of sustainable transition as it unfolds over a couple of decades around the development of a pump concept in a Danish pump manufacturing company. We will especially pay close attention to how ambitious visions, societal demands for energy saving products and sustainable manufacturing, technology offerings, have been translated into engineering decisions and new constructions of users and markets.

The biography of this material artefact includes disputes and controversies across several different locations and perspectives within engineering, strategy and marketing worlds of what is seen as a viable product concept. Perceptions of what constitute a relevant product idea seems to transform several times before stabilized in a viable and marketable product. How can this transformation be characterized and understood? What is the stabilizing or transformative role of particular intermediary objects in this process and how do they interact with, defend themselves from or enact institutionalized frames and dominant understandings in established organizational practices?