This paper analyses research-technology (RT) emergence and management at INVAP. INVAP is an Argentinean state-owned enterprise based in Bariloche, Patagonia. Most INVAP decision-makers find it challenging to develop technology to meet client-specific needs. RTs exploit interstitial boundary-crossing knowledge. Organisational technology-rooted R&D learning can be characterised as a joint, transverse, inter-departmental and inter-disciplinary process. RT-related technologies have the potential to be dis-embedded from a specific development-project and/or technological area and re-embedded in another project or area. This paper traces the historical dynamics of six RTs at INVAP. Its perspective marginalises the conventional R&D emphasis on the generation of new products and the improvement of production processes, and highlights the importance of monitoring RT emergence. It argues that technology-based product portfolio strategies can profit substantially from good RT management and planning.

PAGES
291 – 304
DOI
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Issues
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Agnes Horvath, Magic and the Will to Science: A Political Anthropology of Liminal Technicality
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Gibson Burrell, Ronald Hartz, David Harvie, Geoff Lightfoot, Simon Lilley and Friends, Shaping for Mediocrity: The Cancellation of Critical Thinking at our Universities
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Bas de Boer, How Scientific Instruments Speak: Postphenomenology and Technological Mediations in Neuroscientific Practice
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Bjørn Lomborg, False Alarm
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How does innovation arise in the bicycle sector? The users’ role and their betrayal in the case of the ‘gravel bike’
How to make an artificial satellite out of a nuclear reactor. An exploration of research-technology emergence and management at INVAP*
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