“Don’t Stop Believin’”: Sustaining Attention for Slow-to-Emerge Technological Practices

About the seminar topic

Many observers comment on the rapid pace of technological change. However, many technologies and technology-enabled practices including flying cars, virtual reality and nuclear fusion have been very slow to diffuse, if they emerge at all. Even as a robust literature has examined factors that shape the development of new technologies and the timing of diffusion, few studies have examined how and why we continue to pay attention to technologies that have not, in fact, meaningfully diffused.

In this study, we trace the development of telecommuting over three decades, beginning with the origins of the concept in 1973. We find that even as media rhetoric around telecommuting increases over time, the actual practice remains very limited and nowhere approaching any predictions. Through an analysis of this rhetoric, we explain this persistent attention as a result of 3 factors:

• interpretive flexibility around telecommuting enables it to be posited as the solution to an ever-expanding array of problems. As these problems both arise and persist, they serve to sustain interest in telecommuting
• the continual emergence of new facilitating technologies offers a plausible explanation for why telecommuting had not earlier diffused and a justifiable reason to expect that it finally will
• the promise of telecommuting leads to the emergence of a new market for technology products and services, such that commercial interests sustain telecommuting rhetoric in the absence of meaningful practice

Our study offers 3 main contributions:

• we provide insight into how the ‘pre-emergence’ phase of technology and industry evolution may be sustained over many decades of non-emergence
• we foreground the role of interpretative flexibility in technology emergence, exploring how this flexibility may not be resolved over time but rather broadened
• we contribute to the literature on hype by showing how hype need not be transitory and how interested organisations may not only respond to but also generate hype

Speaker bio

Andrew Nelson is the Randall C Papé Chair in Entrepreneurship and Innovation and Professor of Management at the University of Oregon. He also holds a courtesy appointment in bioengineering and served as Associate Vice President for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the University of Oregon from 2015-2022. Andrew received his PhD in Management Science and Engineering from Stanford University, where he subsequently served as a Lecturer. He also holds an MSc (with distinction) from Oxford University and a BA (with honours and distinction) from Stanford.

Andrew’s research explores the social dimensions of science and technology, including the development and commercialisation of innovations and the relationships between occupations and technological change. Among other outlets, his work appears in the Academy of Management Journal, Administrative Science Quarterly, Organization Science, Research Policy, Strategical Management Journal and in his books, ‘The Sound of Innovation: Stanford’ and the Computer Music Revolution (MIT Press, 2015) and ‘Technology Ventures: From Idea to Enterprise’ (McGraw-Hill, 6th edition released 2025).

His research has been highlighted in The Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times and on National Public Radio, among other outlets. Andrew also serves as Deputy Editor at Organization Science. He is a prior Associate Editor of the Academy of Management Journal (AMJ) and serves on the editorial boards of AMJ and the Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal.

Register

No registration required. If you have any questions about this seminar, please email Luke Slater.