Innovation Studies

The subject of study of my MSc thesis was a revival of vinyl replay (LP records) within the dynamics of music replay in 2007, including declining CD sales, the disappearance of compact cassettes, RIAA actions against file-sharers and the increasing popularity of legal downloading, to understand how such events could co-occur.

In this thesis I have described and analyzed a historical overview of major developments that have shaped audio (and video) replay. I compared the values these developments hold for the parties involved between mainstream audio (and video) replay and vinyl replay. To this end I developed a methodology called the Value System. The result is an organized insight into a complex situation of agency and structure, over time, across formats.

It’s main conclusion then was that, when a necessity has moved to the digital domain and becomes a commodity there, this will provide room for the previous analogue process to be enjoyed in limited form as a classical experience, or, premium experience.

This Impact Report identifies and summarises the diverse impacts, resulting from the £500m of UK funding of Science and Technology in 2013, using numerous quantitative metrics and short case study extracts.  It shows how the varied impacts of a national science and technology organization and its many funded programmes can be annually identified, captured, tracked, and summarised in a public document.

The report was produced for, and by, the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) -  the UK Research Council responsible for funding: (1) all UK astronomy, particle and nuclear physics research, (2) related UK science and technology facilities (e.g. as Harwell and Daresbury), (3) the UK contribution to international science (e.g. CERN, international telescopes and space missions), (4) innovation and business spin-off programmes, and (5) UK public engagement activities.

The Report was co-researched and co-authored by the STFC Impact Team, including myself while Impact Evaluation Manager in 2013, with Dr. Claire Dougan-McCallie (lead author/Head of Impact) and Jenny Beard, with additional input from senior managers, and many data and case study contributions from other key managers across STFC.

Varied key impacts are identified and reported including:

• Research amongst the best (by citation impact) in astronomy, nuclear and particle physics.
• Supported research of 226 Principal Investigators in 70 universities, led to 1,100 peer-reviewed papers in 2012.
• Facilities (the Diamond Light Source, ISIS and CLF) were used in 2012/13 by over 4,200 unique users , in over 2,400 experiments, producing over 1,000 papers in peer-reviewed journals.

• Technology from CERN benefited the UK economy by over £100 billion every year.
• Funding the development of the UK’s space, internet and computer animation industries, returned over £500 billion to the UK economy per annum.
• Funded Innovation Campuses hosted over 230 enterprises and supported over 5,000 jobs.
• UK industry won £43 million in contracts from the international subscriptions funded, and had accumulated a total of £150 million since 2005.

• Funded research inspired future generations to study STEM subjects, attracting 90% of UK undergraduates to study physics, funded 782 PhD students  and 16,800 student training days.
• Between 2009 to 2012 public engagement programmes engaged people on 58 million occasions, with 2 million people engaged in face-to-face activities in 2013 alone.

Книга посвящена вопросам качественной методологии и планиро- ванию исследовательских проектов. Основная идея книги – показать важную роль исследовательской рефлексии, с какими методологи- ческими выборами сталкиваются социальные ученые в процессе качественного исследования. В отличие от классических учебников, где дискуссии об изменчивости объектов исследования и  методов их изучения остаются за рамками рассмотрения, авторы коллективного труда проблематизируют такие базовые понятия как «исследование»,
«качество», «границы объекта».
Включены двенадцать  кейсов  из  области  науки,  технологий и инноваций, в которых авторы подробно описывают поиск анали- тических инструментов. На материалах исследований интернета, альтернативных мобильностей, стволовых клеток и других инно- ваций, авторы показывают сложность технологий, которые могут выступать как в качестве объекта, так и инструмента исследования. Отдельная часть книги посвящена переосмыслению ролей участников исследовательского процесса и формам сотрудничества, а также новым  технологиям в  организации «совместных» форм  познания и  репрезентации уязвимых групп. Книга таким образом выходит за границу области узко тематической области исследований техно- логий и инноваций и отражает новейшие дискуссии об изменениях в качественной методологии.

Innovation involves many aspects of our society: laboratory research, new product development and service and companies creation. Innovation in recent times focuses on issues of environment, health, cultural practices, communication and technology. This course is part of the academic commitment to create a School of Innovation and start building the basis for future degree in Engineering of the Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Yachay Tech. Degree and similar subjects are part of the academic programs of international technical universities like CalTech, Carnagie Mellon University, Stanford University, Purdue University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Mines ParisTech.
This course is part of a broad concept that involves the creation of a new area of research for innovation and entrepreneurship, the development of lines of emblematic research and implementation of strategic activities within the scope of the knowledge society.
The research group Yachay Tech-Innovation (YT-IN) contributes directly to the development and monitoring of the subject both in teaching and research activity so.
The joint and synergic effort of Yachay Tech and specifically the research group YT-IN with universities and national and international companies promoted the creation of this course to encourage entrepreneurial culture in Ecuador. Therefore, this course articulates a space of innovation that aims to be the seed of incubator projects of entrepreneurship in Yachay Tech. This will have the help of other teachers and outside contributors to the research group YT-IN .

The Business Model Canvas is a strategic management and lean start-up template can be used as aid for developing a new, or analyzing and mapping an existing business model of a company. It is a visual chart with elements describing a firm or product's value proposition, infrastructure, customers, and finances. It assists firms in aligning their activities by illustrating potential trade-offs. It gives a graphic representation of a number of variables that show the values of the organisation.

A business model is a description of how your business intends to operate and make money. Sounds simple, RIGHT?

"La igualdad de género en el aula de Lengua Castellana y Literatura de 4º ESO: Usos amorosos de la postguerra española (1987) de Carmen Martín Gaite" es el título de este Trabajo Final de Máster que redacté para el Máster de Formación del Profesorado de Secundaria - Especialidad de Lengua Castellana y Literatura por la UDIMA.

En él hago una propuesta de enseñanza del ensayo de Carmen Martín Gaite mediante su estudio en clase y la elaboración de "booktrailers" por parte del alumnado, en los que se analicen estereotipos de género actuales, en contraste con los analizados por la autora en "Usos amorosos de la posguerra española".

Fue dirigido por la profesora Elena Extramiana del Olmo, y defendido ante un tribunal cuya presidenta fue la profesora Ana Peñas Ruiz y cuya vocal fue la profesora Cristina Izaskun Martín Gómez.

TECHNOSCIENCE & SOCIETY BOOK SERIES

Series Editor: Kean Birch

Objectives

Our futures are highly uncertain in large part because of the changing relationship between technoscience and society: artificial intelligence holds enormous technoscientific promise, yet raises significant social and ethical questions with its development; personal data is supposed to be the ‘oil’ of the future, yet it’s exploitation threatens our privacy and identity; genomics, proteomics, and other omic sciences could contribute massively to improving healthcare, but their benefit depends on how they are deployed; and low-carbon technologies like electric cars are essential to solving climate change, although they also threaten to embed us further into problematic socio-technical systems. All these and much more underpin this new book series with its aims to do the following:

• Disseminate scholarly research on the relationship between technoscience and society;
• Focus on contemporary challenges arising from the changing relationship between technoscience and society;
• Attract new and emerging scholars using interdisciplinary approaches at the cutting edge of social scientific and humanistic studies of science, technology, and innovation;
• Reach new audiences for scholarly research on technoscience and society by producing accessible, though still rigorous, scholarly books.

This chapter aims to provide a theoretical framework in order to systematize old and new media relationships. In particular, I propose to split the political, economic, technological and cultural relations between old and new media into four coexisting and at times overlapping steps (imitation, specification, change, and continuity) and, for each stage, to give examples from the media history of the last two hundred years. Reflections on the media life cycles, media change, intermediality, “new” as digital in the conclusion helps understanding that the old and the new is not a dichotomy.

The purpose of this study is to theoretically construct a conceptual model of entrepreneurial leadership. In the present paper, we provide a precise overview on five highly cited, top journal articles in regards to the entrepreneurial leadership concept, while some other texts are also used to work as complementary materials. In order to accomplish the task, after reviewing the articles by going through their key themes (research questions, key findings, and etc.), the entrepreneurial leadership model is presented, which is mostly applicable for pre-startup firms, while might have some applications for other types of businesses. This conceptual model is illustratively drawn at the end of the paper. It considers different leadership characteristics and skills required to properly lead an entrepreneurial firm, while it also claims that using a team-based leadership approach may further benefit a company in comparison to a solo-entrepreneur one.

Keywords: Theoretical/Conceptual model; Entrepreneurial leadership; Pre-startup firms; Management-based approach.

Singapore’s foray into biotechnology is generally considered an economic and scientific success, its most visible sign being Biopolis, launched in 2003 as an integrated cluster of research facilities in an urban setting. Biopolis, however, is itself the result of a long-term effort to build up capacities for biotechnological research. The present paper analyzes the early (pre-Biopolis) biotechnology discourse in Singapore, with special emphasis on its representations in the official media and on its strategic uses by the various stakeholders involved. Against the backdrop of the global emergence of biotechnology from the late 1970s onwards, the paper traces the motivations for Singapore’s formulation of its own biotechnology policy, paying attention throughout to the dynamic between scientists and policymakers. It is this relationship, along with the ambiguities that characterize it, which is responsible for the sustained establishment of biotechnology in Singapore. At an interpretative level, an attempt is made to compare the case of Singapore’s biotechnology policy with competing discourses of technology and modernity. The discourse on biotechnology can thus be recognised as a means of mobilizing its intended audience for the various stages in the country’s path towards (real or perceived) modernization.

PLEASE SEND AN EMAIL TO VINCENT.BLOK@WUR.NL IF YOU WANT TO RECEIVE THE EDITED VERSION

In this article, we reflect on the conditions under which new technologies emerge in the Anthropocene and raise the question of how to conceptualize sustainable technologies therein. To this end, we explore an eco-centric approach to technology development, called biomimicry. We discuss opposing views on biomimetic technologies, ranging from a still anthropocentric orientation focusing on human management and control of Earth's life-support systems, to a real eco-centric concept of nature, found in the responsive conativity of nature. This concept provides the ontological and the epistemological condition for an eco-centric concept of biomimetic technologies in the Anthropocene. We distinguish five principles for this concept that can guide future technological developments.

This paper focuses on the cases of Malaysia and Thailand and investigates the possibility of upgrading these countries from the middle-income trap and the possible roles of the 4th Industrial Revolution (4IR)
in this process. The 4IR may induce firms to introduce factory automation to facilitate upgrade into higher segments with local spillovers. A key factor for this positive scenario is local institutions facilitating the
training and upskilling of their local workforce. By contrast, increased problems are expected for other countries with the mid-range level of wages and mid-level of educated population, and firms in these economies mostly execute labor-intensive production and are likely
to be substituted by additional factory automations or their multinational firms may move to neighboring countries for low wages.

The article sums up the results of research oriented to analyze dynamics and outputs related to the development of two different technological parks in the North-East of Italy: the Area Science Park of Trieste and the Vega of Venezia. The research has tried to find an
answer to the following question: what is the regulation model more efficient to implement
good innovation policies? The article argues that, to achieve an efficient innovation
governance, it is needed a strong regulation by the innovation broker – the central hub
of the innovation network, able to support interactions among innovation-makers and
innovation-takers. To test this hypothesis, the empirical research has used both qualitative
and quantitative methodologies. In the Area Science Park, good innovation performance
appears strictly connected to strong regulation of the technological transfer process.
In the Vega, differently, low innovation performances are combined with weak innovation
regulation. The paper concludes that institutional settings at the local level can be powered
by a model of governance innovation able to combine autonomous interactions among
main actors involved in technological innovation with a strong regulation of the process  by the innovation broker.

From the rising number of hackerspaces to an increase in hardware start-ups, maker culture is envisioned as an enabler of the next industrial revolution – a source of unhindered technological innovation, a revamp of broken economies and educational systems. Drawing from long-term ethnographic research, this article examines how China’s makers demarcate Chinese manufacturing as a site of expertise in implementing this vision. China’s makers demonstrate that the future of making – if to materialize in the ways currently envisioned by writers, politicians and scholars of the global tech industry – rests on taking seriously the technological and cultural fabrics of professional making outside familiar IT innovation hubs like Silicon Valley: making-do, mass production, and re-use. I trace back to China’s first hackerspace, documenting how a collective of makers began to move away from appropriating Western concepts of openness towards promoting China as source for knowledge, creativity and innovation. This article demonstrates that when China’s makers set up open hardware businesses and articulate a unique culture of “hacking with Chinese characteristics,” they draw boundaries between the professional making they saw embodied in Chinese industrial production and the hobbyist making embodied in Western histories and cultures of hacking. In so doing, they position China as site of both technological and cultural expertise, intervening in dominant conceptions of computing that split manufacturing and innovation along geographical lines. The article contributes to critical scholarship of innovation and making cultures, technological expertise and authorship.

Hiring decisions can be risky. How much can employers save by better understanding the motivations and objectives of each applicant?  How much time and expertise should be invested in getting to know each applicant? Will such efforts raise the return on investment?  What are the shortcomings and deficits of the criteria to evaluate, compare and rank applicants?  How do they need to get changed to reflect the shift in the relative order of job skills between employees when the composition of the team (total of all employees) changes by hiring, firing or replacing?  A job description combines tasks and steps to a random set of job responsibilities.  But could there be better ways to bundle tasks together and to look for the most qualified applicant for this particular arbitrarily defined task bundle?  Could the employer benefit from regrouping all small tasks, which a company must perform, by changing which and how many small job tasks will be bundled together in different job descriptions?  And if so, how can reassigning each little tasks from different jobs to the most suitable employee (task-centered approach) instead of looking for the most qualified applicant for a particular job (job-centered approach) help in improving productivity and profitability?  How and why will the new task-centered approach help to increase the workforce diversity more than the job-centered approach?  How can reassigning tasks help disabled and handicapped lacking essential job functions to get hired anyways?  How can employers benefit from not only looking for the most qualified applicant for any particular job (i.e. arbitrarily bundle of tasks and steps) Why does the task-centered based hiring decision benefit employees, employees, applicants and disabled job-seekers more than job-centered based hiring decisions?  What are the benefits to seek the best employee for each task (task-centered) instead of the most qualified applicant for a particular job?  How can employers benefit from a paradigm shift replacing the job-centered with the task-centered hiring perspective?  How can the multi-dimensional effects, which different combinations of employees (i.e. teams) on the overall productivity and profitability be measured?  How much welfare and unemployment benefits could be saved if employers were aware of the additional benefits when making task or employee based hiring decisions instead of exclusively looking for the most qualified applicant?  How can reassigning job-tasks to different employees help applicants to become the most qualified job-seeker despite lacking essential job functions?  How could employers be convinced that they'd benefit most from reassigning tasks from different jobs to the employee most qualified for a particular task instead of only looking for the best applicant for a particular job consisting of an arbitrary bundle of tasks?

This book presents an innovative approach to the study of policy instruments in the context of broader governance dynamics. It mobilises concepts from innovation studies to reconstruct emerging trajectories of policy practice that result from interactions of models and real world configurations of governance. Case studies are presented on emissions trading and network access regulation in the utilities, two instruments with a key role in market-oriented governance transformations over the last decades. The analysis offers insights into patterns of innovation journeys in governance, the social life of policy instruments and the formation of instrument constituencies and regimes of policy technology, and the ambivalent role of technical models in the dynamics of social change.

In an everyday perspective of resistance, there is a tendency to favor hu­man action and agency, both in the exercise of power or in the acts of resistance. The aim of this study is to examine material agency in every­day power-dynamics and to open a methodology of resistance studies in the realm of physical objects, designs and materials. In correlation to a "new materialist'' perspective on power, resistance works to build affinity between humans and nonhuman agency and disrupt materially-support­ed subordination. In this study, a materialist methodology is introduced, with examples of how consumer objects are transformed to interfere with consumer relationships to become tools far cultivating resistant capabili­ ties. As a case, the study examines a handbag made from a cookie box, produced by the Spanish activist "movement " Yomango, where the mate­rial properties of the metal bpx are mobilized to become active in the re­ sistance. From a materialistperspective, the handbag becomes more than-a symbolic prop for human-led activists and joins the ranks of co-resistors.

Infrastructure threatens to lock-in societies to fossil fuels, unless something is done about it now. This is because infrastructure lasts for such a long-time, meaning that any infrastructure built or rebuilt now will last well into the 21st century – even until the end of the century in some cases. Consequently, there is a need to integrate climate change, especially adaptation, into infrastructure now or societies will be left with infrastructure designed around an unsustainable socio-technical system (e.g. combustion engines, roads, suburbanization, etc.). Such change is conceptualized in the literature as a sustainability transition. However, any attempts at such transitions have to address the materialities of infrastructure systems (e.g. physical form, environmental context, etc.). In this paper I develop the concept of socio-material systems and apply it to transport infrastructure in Ontario, Canada.

Over the last sixty years, Thailand has become the "Automotive Hub of Asia", shifting from import substitution to export orientation, including an increasingly significant role in the automobile global value chain (GVC). Key contributory factors towards this shift include: (i) government incentives targeted at technologically sophisticated activities; (ii) collaborations among universities, research institutes and industry in sector-specific teaching and research programmes; and (iii) a shift in a sector-specific government promotion agency towards "intermediary" activities that facilitate collaborations among stakeholders. Local firms, through indigenous strategies and efforts, have fostered position upgrading in the GVC. The industry has upgraded from a production base to a more innovation and R&D-intensive one, while becoming more product-specific. Outstanding challenges lie in the adoption of new technologies. While robotization in production has been implemented extensively, the push for production of electric vehicles (EVs) has yet to succeed.

The subject today known as holography emerged from research in three diverse locations and having distinct origins, aims and methods: at a commercial electrical laboratory in Rugby, England, from the late 1940s until the mid 1950s; at the Vavilov State Optical Institute in Leningrad from the late 1950s and again from the mid 1960s; and, from a classified research laboratory operated by the University of Michigan beginning in the mid 1950s and accelerating from the early 1960s. The scientists, engineers, artisans, entrepreneurs and companies in that third location dominated the subject through the 1960s, making Ann Arbor, for a time, the ‘holography capital of the world’. Based on extensive unpublished documents, artifacts and interviews with some two-dozen participants (much of it as yet unavailable in publicly accessible archives), this paper focuses on the origins of the subject in Ann Arbor, Michigan. It also explores how the initial explosion of interest was transmitted to other research groups, firms, artists and the wider public.

Understanding the evolution and emergence of technology domains remains a challenge, particularly so for potentially breakthrough technologies. Though it is well recognized that emergence of new fields is complex and uncertain, to make decisions amidst such uncertainty, one needs to mobilise various sources of intelligence to identify known-knowns and known-unknowns to be able to choose appropriate strategies and policies. This competitive technical intelligence cannot rely on simple trend analyses, breakthrough technologies have little past to inform such trends, and the directions of evolution are difficult. Neither do qualitative tools, embracing the complexities, provide all the solutions, since transparent and repeatable techniques need to be employed to create best practices and evaluate the intelligence that comes from such exercises. In this paper, we present a hybrid roadmapping technique that draws on a number of approaches and integrates them into an approach that can be applied to breakthrough technology fields and integrates a multi-level approach (individual activities, industry evolutions and broader global changes). We describe this approach in deeper detail with a case study on dye-sensitized solar cells. Our contribution to this special issue is to showcase the technique as part of a family approaches which are emerging around the world to inform strategy and policy.

Innovation studies has been enriched by recent engagement with Actor-Network Theory (ANT), which appears to share many concerns with the management of externalities and the enrollment of allies. But this approach nevertheless renders the question of where innovation comes from mysterious. Drawing on the work of Michel Serres, we develop a “parasitic” account of innovation, where third spaces, inscribed in material artefacts and visual representation, intrude into the innovation process. Illustrating our argument with empirical material derived from a study of Med Dialysis—a medical technology company based in the UK—we propose that parasitic interventions distribute order and disorder in a reversible fashion within innovative organizations. Anticipating and responding to the parasite is treated as a central process for managers and engineers who engage with a representation of the world that is “constitutively vague.” We conclude with a proposal for developing an application of Serres’ work in management and organization studies—a “dark organization theory.”

This paper argues that although many transgenic crops are still in their early states of adoption and even more are being tested and developed, emerging trends show significant societal benefits through positive economic impact (especially by raising farm incomes), fostering food security, and promoting environment sustainability. Agricultural biotechnology has the potential to increase production on existing arable land; reduce losses related to pests, disease, and drought; increase access to food through higher farm incomes; raise nutrition levels; and promote sustainable agriculture. The pipeline includes crops with potential benefits such as enhanced photosynthesis, stress tolerance, aluminum tolerance, salinity tolerance, pest and disease resistance, nitrogen use efficiency, phosphate use efficiency, and nitrogen fixation.

The becoming productive of consumer culture has been an important theme for social research. Within neoliberal discourse, the link between consumer culture and new forms of immaterial production has been conceptualized as “creativity.” This paper uses the experience of Bangkok’s fashion markets to begin to articulate an alternative understanding of the relation between consumer culture and immater- ial production, a different kind of “creativity.” We suggest that Bangkok’s fashion markets manifest a kind of creativity where innovation is highly socialized, as opposed to being oriented around the notion of individual genius and individual intellectual property; where participation is popular as opposed to elite-based and where the ambiguous relation between creation and commercial success that is intrinsic to Western notions of creativity is replaced by an embrace of markets and commerce as vehicles for self-expression. Bangkok’s fashion markets represent an example of a market-based commons centered innovation economy.

System innovations are long-term transitions from one sociotechnical system to another. They involve not only changes in technology, but also changes in user practices, regulation, industrial networks, infrastructure, and culture. Current scenario methods are not entirely suited to explore possible system innovations. They lack attention to the co-evolution of technology and society, and to insights from innovation studies and sociology of technology. Hence, we propose a new tool: sociotechnical scenarios. We illustrate the tool with two scenarios in the electricity domain, sketching transition paths to more sustainable systems. We also derive strategic policy recommendations from the two scenarios.

Different bodies of literature have attempted to explain what factors and events drive industries throughout processes of environmental change. The latter is a gradual, historical process of evolution from lower to higher degrees of development. Based on concepts derived from evolutionary economics, greening technological progress and resource-based view of the firm, this article informs the sustain- ability transitions literature by providing an account of the evolution in the chemical industry's striving for the design, use and production of environmentally sound chemical processes and products based upon eco-innovation. A conceptual model was elaborated depicting five stages of environmental change in the chemical industry in the period 1901e2030. The authors empirically tested this model by con- ducting a longitudinal computer-aided content analysis of 255 documents addressing different environmental and innovation aspects in this industry in the same period of time. The results of this article advance our modern understanding of the different stages of evolution of the chemical industry in terms of environmental change. Consistent with the conceptual model hitherto presented, the findings of this article highlight a number cumulative of factors that enabled the evolution of the chemical industry throughout time supporting eco-innovation, highlighting the intertwined nature of regulation, innovation, and technological change. It is plausible that the future development of this industry might be shaped by the policy-driven paradigms of sustainability and resource efficiency.

Resumo: Esta tese apresenta a história do carro a álcool no Brasil, a partir de uma perspectiva sociotécnica, informada por estudos conduzidos nos campos dos Estudos Sociais da Ciência e da Tecnologia, Dinâmicas da Inovação, e Politicas de Ciência e Tecnologia. A história do carro a álcool no Brasil desde o início do século XX é interessante por si só e merece ser recontada. Ao tratar o carro a álcool como uma configuração sociotécnica e traçando a sua jornada inovativa, mais aspectos do desenvolvimento se tornam visíveis: o emaranhamento dos desenvolvimentos técnicos, econômicos e sociais (Capítulo 1); a importância do discurso sobre o Carro a Álcool Brasileiro e como ele se tornou uma entidade discursiva por si só (Capítulo 2); o papel especial que teve o estado Brasileiro em estimular o desenvolvimento do carro a álcool e mantendo o seu enraizamento social (Capítulo 3); o declínio parcial do carro a álcool depois de 1989 e seu re-avivamento noutra forma, o carro flex, que ilustra que não é a substituição de velhas por novas tecnologias, mas uma colcha de retalhos de velhas e novas tecnologias em continua evolução (Capítulo 4). A jornada inovativa do carro a álcool no Brasil, incluindo suas várias não-linearidades, começou com a pesquisa e o desenvolvimento conduzido no Instituto Nacional de Tecnologia, foi menos visível nas décadas de 1950 e de 1960s, e depois se tornou novamente importante nas décadas de 1970 e 1980, como uma resposta para a crise do petróleo de 1973 e para a dependência brasileira em petróleo. Por causa das mudanças nos contextos econômicos e políticos, ele quase desaparece na década de 1990. Nos próximos três capítulos foca-se a análise em três aspectos chaves da dinâmica sociotécnica na jornada inovativa do carro a álcool. O capítulo 2 trata do Carro a Álcool como uma entidade discursiva presente nas páginas da revista automotiva Quatro Rodas, que ao se tornar uma referência constante na revista reforçava o momentum para o desenvolvimento tecnológico do carro a álcool no Brasil. No capítulo 3 mostra-se como o estado Brasileiro macro-orquestrou o carro a álcool, conduzindo pesquisas e desenvolvimentos para o desenvolvimento do artefato sociotécnico e ao mesmo tempo criando as condições para o enraizamento social do carro. O capítulo 4 reconstrói o declínio do carro a álcool durante a década de 1990 e a emergência do carro flex durante a década de 2000 como uma colcha de retalhos de velhas e novas tecnologias em continua evolução. Nas conclusões, se dá novamente destaque à importância da abordagem multi-nível, assim como também o modo como a jornada inovativa do carro a álcool no Brasil foi moldada pelo regime tecnológico do automóvel, o regime nacional de inovação, e por novas constituencies de design e de manutenção, que em contra-partida foram modificadas pelo que aconteceu na jornada inovativa do carro a álcool no Brasil. Assim, esta tese não apenas apresenta uma reconstrução do desenvolvimento do carro a álcool no Brasil, mas também dá destaque à importantes elementos da jornada inovativa em contexto e contribui para os Estudos Sociais da Ciência e da Tecnologia, Dinâmicas da Inovação, e Políticas de Ciência e Tecnologia. Abstract: This thesis presents the history of the ethanol car in Brazil, analyzing it from a sociotechnical perspective, informed by scholarly work in Social Studies of Science, Innovation Dynamics and Science and Technology Policy. The history of the ethanol car in Brazil since the early twentieth century until today is interesting in its own right and deserves to be retold. By treating the ethanol car as a sociotechnical configuration and tracing its innovation journey, further aspects of the development become visible: the entanglement of technical, economic and social developments (Chapter 1); the importance of the discourse about the Brazilian Ethanol Car and how it became a discursive entity in its own right (Chapter 2); the special role of the Brazilian state in stimulating the development of the ethanol car and ensuring its embedding in society (Chapter 3); the partial decline of the ethanol car after 1989 and its revival in another form, the Flexible Fuel Vehicle, which illustrates that it is not substitution of old by new technologies, but an evolving patchwork of old and new technologies (Chapter 4). The innovation journey of the ethanol car, including various non-linearities, started as a research and development project conducted at the Instituto Nacional de Tecnologia, was less visible in the 1950s and 1960s, and then became important in the 1970s and the 1980s, as a response to the 1973 oil crisis and Brazil¿s dependence on imported oil. Because of changing economic and political contexts, it almost disappeared during the 1990s. In the next three chapters I zoom in on three key dynamics of sociotechnical development in the innovation journey of the ethanol car. Chapter 2 treats the Brazilian Ethanol Car as a discursive entity present on the pages of the automobile magazine Quatro Rodas, that by becoming a recurrent reference in the magazine reinforced the momentum for the technological development of the ethanol car in Brazil. In Chapter 3 it is shown how the Brazilian state macro-enacted the ethanol car, that is, at the same time conducting research for the development of the sociotechnical artifact, and creating the conditions for the societal embedding of the car. Chapter 4 reconstructs the decline of the ethanol car during the 1990s and the emergence of the flex-fuel vehicle during the 2000s as an evolving patchworks of old and new technologies, and argues that this is the general phenomenon encompassing different specific patterns. In the conclusion, the importance of the multi-level approach is highlighted again, as well as the way the innovation journey of the ethanol car in Brazil was shaped by the automobile technological regime, the national innovation regime, and by new design and maintenance constituencies, which in their turn were modified by what happened in the innovation journey of the ethanol car in Brazil. Thus, this thesis not only offers a sociotechnical reconstruction of the development of the ethanol car in Brazil, but also, by highlighting important elements of innovation journeys in context and taking part in the reflections about the tools and approaches of the sociotechnical perspective, contributes to the scholarly fields of social studies of science and technology, innovation dynamics and science and technology policy studies.