1. Introduction
The underlying case that will be examined and criticized in this essay is Garud and Karnoe's paper on bricolage versus breakthrough: distributed and embedded agency in technology entrepreneurship. Through technology entrepreneurship, different paths can unfold in several directions depending on initial conditions. This way, one path may prevail the other. The evaluation of the case will look at two contrasting approaches to technology entrepreneurship: How Denmark used bricolage successfully to make wind turbines? How the USA pursued the path of breakthrough and failed? However, it is important to note that neither of these methods is better than the other. Denmark succeeded predominately because of broader macro-level factors. These factors follow the exploration of the main question in the essay; to what extent did factors beyond bricolage contribute to the success of wind power development in Denmark?
This paper aims to evaluate the core description of Garud and Karnoe's research and to further expand on the findings. Various academic journals and works of literature will be examined and address the additional factors that contributed to Denmark's success such as, the effects of social shaping of technology, the importance of feedback and dialogue, and interpretive flexibility in innovation. The essay will follow a critique of Garud and Karnoe’s research by Hendry and Harbourne (2011). Furthermore, innovation will be looked at the national systematic level, highlighting the importance of institutions and Michael Porter's views on competitive advantage and globalization.
2. Core Description & Explanation
Description
Garud and Karnoe's paper addresses two contrasting approaches to engagement of actors in shaping technological paths in Denmark through bricolage and the United States through breakthrough.
Context
The way wind turbines emerged in Denmark and the USA show the importance of collaboration, feedback, and government assistance at the beginning stages of technological development. To be more specific, the technology, in this case, the wind turbines, has to have a more significant impact on the society as a whole.
Denmark and the USA were seen as technology entrepreneurs who have undertaken different approaches to innovation. Technology entrepreneurship, as argued by Garud and Karnoe, has three main interrelated facts. First of which is the fact that there are multiple actors involved and technology entrepreneurship requires an asymmetric distributive process to fuel creativity. Second, actors involved are naturally embedded in the knowledge process and act as a base. Third, different paths can follow depending on starting assumptions. Denmark took the low-tech approach and to the continual improvement of the wind turbine development and the United States took the high-tech approach. The distributed agents involved in the emergence of a technological path and its relationship can be seen in Figure 1. The regulators, evaluators, design and production, use are all interrelated with the technological artifact, in this case, the wind turbines.
Figure 1: Distributive Agents & Emergence of Technological Paths
(Garud and Karnoe, 2003)
Wind Turbine paths in Denmark
Garud and Karnoe (2003) analyze the historical timeline of wind turbine development in both Denmark and the United States. In Denmark the modern wind turbine was first developed by Juul in the 1950s and in the 1970s during the energy crisis, Riisager first "recontextualized" Juul's design, then later a skilled mechanic named Jorgensen improved the design more and implemented an active yaw to the wind turbines. In 1979, Vestas Wind Systems licensed the right to use Jorgensen's wind turbine design and the fiberglass blades. Vestas along with other Danish windmill firms used trial-and-error learning instead of an R&D approach and learned from each other at the Wind Meetings. The owner-users also formed the Danish Wind Mill Owner's Association in 1978 to enhance the safety and productivity of the wind turbines (Tranaes, cited in Garud and Karnoe 2003). Engineers were involved in Danish Wind Turbine Test stations. Additionally, the laws recognized the embedded processes of knowledge thus criteria were set to gain government subsidies. Overall, actors in Denmark expressed genuine willingness to learn and in return were able to give back to the country because of the imposed government policies. Furthermore, Denmark's approach can be seen as successful as compared to the US by looking at annual global market shares as shown in Figure 2.
Figure 2: Global Market Shares for Danish and US firms from 1982 to 2000
(Garud and Karnoe, 2003)
Wind Turbine paths in the USA
Stoddard was an engineering professor at the University of Massachusetts and one of the key influencers in wind turbine design in the US. He rejected Juul's windmill design for being too simplistic, and instead pursued a design that emerged from Canada. Moreover, this resulted in USWindPower, one of the first US firms to adopt Stoddards three bladed lightweight wind turbine design. Test and research centers and windmill associations were also prevalent in the US. Conversely, the main "objective was to develop the knowledge base of fundamental engineering science" (Garud and Karnoe 2003, pp. 283). The American Wind Energy Association's (AWAE) key purpose was to lobby in the US Congress to shape the renewable energy legislation. Policies designed by the government offered market subsidies and a tax credit for wind turbine certified producers, which resulted in "wind gold rush" in California the early 1980s (Garud and Karnoe 2003, pp. 284). The monetary incentives created a backlog in the innovation process of the wind turbines. The delay occurred because of the wrong intrinsic motivation the actors have in getting involved in the industry.
By highlighting the different wind turbine paths, it is evident there are shortcomings with identifying Denmark's success on bricolage and USA's failure on breakthrough methods of innovation.
3. Expansion of Arguments
Beyond Bricolage: Geography and Learning Methods
The success of Denmark's windmill industry lies beyond what the original definition of bricolage is. It is common to think of bricolage similar to the "do-it-yourself" approach. Miner et al. (2001) defines bricolage as a resourceful improvisation that implies a process of self-help and minimizes policy actions and impacts occurring outside local systems. However, according to Hendry and Harbourne (2011), bricolage is the extent of science-based R&D and experience-based learning in development of the Danish wind turbine system. Throughout wind turbine development in Denmark, the policy actions had a larger effect on the innovation process. Consequently, the success of Denmark can be observed as a local phenomenon (Hendry and Harbourne 2011). Garud and Karnoe's paper states that Denmark did not use R&D as part of their research process;,however, Hendry and Harbourne argue that the R&D of turbine companies existed and it was not purely bricolage. The difficulty was in the quantification and codification of knowledge, and it was created not in Danish firms but "in the clusters of vendor companies that supplied the components" (Hendry and Harbourne 2011). The collaborative modification of components of the turbines occurred at the top of the value chain between the manufacturers of the turbines and the system integrators in Denmark.
It is generally assumed that Denmark's success also was based on its incremental improvements to the design of the wind turbines. However, it was more or less based on the developments in the turbine efficiency instead, and the capturing of wind more efficiently by building the windmills in right parts of the land (Hendry and Harbourne 2011).
The United States association with failed breakthrough model resulted in bad press. The path that Denmark followed was not mechanic, and the resources used are different from the United States because of the different circumstances (Kahn, cited in MacKenzie and Wajcman, 1999). The US was striving towards utility-scale wind generation; however, its firms lacked an existing knowledge base in turbine engineering, which caused the path to failure (MacKenzie and Wajcman 1999). Additionally, Denmark had a collaborative mixture of experience-based and science-based models of attaining knowledge, which contributed to the innovation performance as opposed to the US focusing on just one method.
The Role of the Government
It is apparent the government played an essential role in Denmark's success. Langdon Winner stated, "technologies are inherently political" (cited in MacKenzie and Wajcman, 1999). The Danish government stepped in to save the industry from a collapse. Only in the face of danger, the government intervened. Chris Freeman's paper on The National System of Innovation (1995) highlights the prominence of "influence of the national education system, industrial relations, technical and scientific institutions, government policies, cultural traditions and other national institutions is fundamental." Johnson (1992) stated that often institutions are seen as a source of "institutional drag," however; they can provide the drive for technical and economic change. For instance, Germany developed the best technical education and training systems in the world, and the government was able to provide technical advice and assistance (Landes 1970). Frederich List's conception of The National System of Political Economy suggested that Denmark should be one of the countries chosen to join the "German Bund" because of their "descent and whole character" (List 1841). To some extent, Denmark did follow the approach of Germany in the case of wind turbines. The Danish government provided support beyond financial capital to help save the wind turbine industry (Landes 1970).
Denmark understood the importance of localized process early on in the development of the wind turbines. As opposed to the United States relied predominantly on foreign investment (Mackenzie and Wajcman 1999). As Michael Porter (1990) said:
Competitive advantage is created and sustained through a highly localized process. Differences in national economic structures, values, cultures, institutions, and histories contribute to competitive success. (It is) important to retain flexibility and to nourish alternative sources of radically new technology.
The intensification of global competition has made the role of the home nation more important, not less."
The Social Shaping of Technology and Denmark's success
Ulrich Beck (1992) mentions the concept of "reflexive modernization," instead of progress being something that just happens to societies like Denmark; all actors should be something that is actively and democratically shaped (cited in Mackenzie and Wajcman, 1999). Denmark was able to differentiate them in the process in the discovery stage, which is the most crucial step. The concept of finding that is already there is wrong, dialogue, experimental traditions and ways of understanding the world need to be drawn from broader society (Shapin cited in MacKenzie and Wajcman, 1999). In Denmark, windmill technology was seen as a whole system, and not as separate components.
4. Analysis, Synthesis & Evaluation
Bricolage is an over-simplistic concept that ignores the long-term perspective on technological innovations. The success of the windmill industry in Denmark attributed to factors beyond the use of bricolage; the government, country size, and geographic location played a more critical role. The United States had a population of over 200 million people in the 1980s, and Denmark with just over 5 million people. The United States merely because of its size couldn't have culture and experience to experiment with the bricolage approach. Their motivation of approaching things on a grander scale is rational.
Technological determinism shows that science and technology are connected, but technology has contributed to science as it has to technology. Technological determinist will say that intrinsically the best technology is the triumphant one. This is similar to the approach the Americans had with the windmills. They wanted to create the most superior windmill to beat their Danish competitors regarding innovation.
Garud and Karnoe failed to emphasize the macro-level factors that influenced the paths taken in each country. The authors' perspective was clearly on the opposing side of breakthrough and in favour of bricolage, however, as critiqued by Hendry and Harbourne (2011), Denmark didn't even follow bricolage in its purest form.
5. Conclusion
The history of how windmills were developed in Denmark and USA plays a vital role in where the countries are today concerning wind power generated energy. As said by MacKinzie and Wajcman (1999), "which technology succeeds is not determined by their intrinsic characteristics alone, but also by their histories of adoption." Denmark’s success in wind turbine manufacturing did not come from pure form of bricolage. The government policies, population size, collaboration, associations, cultural differences is what set Denmark apart from the United States.
Denmark was able to scale and grow to a leader in wind energy production. Today, Denmark proved that a country could be powered purely by renewable energy. On July 2015, Denmark generated 140% of electricity demand, enough to spare to its neighboring countries and store in hydropower systems (Nelsen 2015). On October 2017, the President of the United States signed an agreement with Denmark to expand wind power to the shores of the United States. The US is relying on Denmark's expertise to build wind power farms (Jacobsen and Gronholt-Pedersen 2017).
References
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Hendry, C. and Harborne, P. (2011). Changing the view of wind power development: More than "bricolage". Research Policy, 40(5), pp.778–789.
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