Spinuzzi, C. (2017). “I Think You Should Explore the Kinky Market”: How Entrepreneurs Develop Value Propositions as Emergent Objects of Activity Networks. Mind, Culture, and Activity, 24(3), 258-272.
In this narrative review article,* Spinuzzi aims to make the case for a fourth-generation activity theory** by using a research project of his to develop activity theory in three ways. That is, he uses his work on the Korean accelerator (see "making" and "remaking") as fodder, as a way to imagine three different ways in which AT could be developed further. He does this primarily by relying on a single example, although towards the end of the article he does start to talk about more of his research on Korea.
It is from this article that I draw connections to an email comment Spinuzzi left me once. "PS, I am thinking about your insight regarding how these decks portray milestones/roadmap as a single path rather than multiple branching paths. This is a great insight in that it is so different from what we see in the incubation stage, in which the process involves multiplying potential paths and engaging with cocreation with different stakeholders. I'm specifically thinking of the pivots we saw in London et al and Pogue et al articles (Korea and Portugal programs, respectively), in which the VP is changed in terms of argument, application, design, and/or financial model. The process is iterative and involves changing partners / articulating the tech to different concerns. One of my collaborators, David Guile, and I worked up some figures (so far unpublished) to describe this process. In these, the different shapes represent different stakeholders who are brought on board, continue for a while, then drop off, leaving their mark on the collaborative object (in this case, the VP)."
Spinuzzi begins the article like this. "Here, I argue that such objects, which sit at the nexus of a network of activities, pose three challenges for CHAT’s treatment of the object. First, they function not just as “sensemakers” but as sense integrators. Second, because such objects must be tractable to the potential projections of actors across the activity network, they are fundamentally dialogic. Third, these objects are cyclically transformed by the activities that share them—but because these activities have different cycles, transforming the shared object entails synchronizing the cycles of the activities making up the network"
In order to discuss the third challenge, Spinnuzzi evokes the concept of interessement (Callon). "The first challenge this case presents to CHAT, then, is that the object of the activity network functions as a sense integrator. The object can unite the activity network only if it can be mutually transformed in a way that unites these different activities. This characteristic has been discussed elsewhere under the heading of interessement (Callon, 1986), in which actors mutually define each other. (See Spinuzzi et al., 2016, for an extension of this argument.) In uniting around the shared, emergent object of the value proposition, actors in otherwise unaffiliated activities define each others’ emergent roles as they cocreate or transform the object to mutually address separate motives." I'm unsure though how interessement qualifies AT. As I recall, interessement is the stage at which actors try to persuade others that other actors' interests would be served by doing what an actor wants--as in, it would be in your interest to do X, while at the same time doing X accomplishes something separate for me, Y. I'm guess this has to do with emergence. How does an object as shared emerge?
I don't see though where he talks about the limitation of AT. What is the limit of AT out of which this challenge can work? Maybe it has something to do with Mol. "although Miettinen (2005) referenced multiplicity, his application is different from that of Law (2002) and others in this tradition (e.g., Akrich, 1993; de Laet & Mol, 2000; Mol, 2002). Such authors describe multiplicity in terms of ontological indeterminacy: The different actors do not agree on onto- logical limits of an object, and thus conceive of it, leverage it, and understand it in different ways. For instance, Mol compellingly argues that, for patients, general practitioners, vascular surgeons, and pathologists, atherosclerosis is not the “same”—it is composed of different, but overlapping, materials and practices. These different actors treat atherosclerosis as a coherent phenomenon, but in practical terms they are dealing with different phenomena: not different aspects, but different configurations of materials and practices, enacted through their different activities. That is, contra Miettinen, the notion of the object, the multiple object is not just a sensemaker but a sense integrator." So maybe in AT, the object is ontologically determinate, i.e., what is projected is ultimately the same object. No, there's no way...
"How do we understand a value proposition as an object in the CHAT sense? And how does such an object—emergent, projective, shared by multiple activities—expand our understanding of CHAT?"--in the intro, Spinuzzi has paragraphs on all of those elements: "emergent, projective, shared by multiple activities"
Let's take one of these: emergence. "Furthermore, this object is in this case emergent. Unlike some of the other commonly cited objects in CHAT studies, such as fields that are transformed from brute earth to grain (Y. Engeström & Escalante, 1996), prey that becomes a shared dinner (Leontyev, 2009), or students who learn in order to become well-prepared citizens (Leont’ev, 1978), this object’s projective state is not pre-determined. It emerges through its transformation, cocreated through the collaboration of pitcher and stakeholders. Put another way, “A business is talked into existence” (Pollack, Rutherford, & Nagy, 2012, p. 918). As Sannino, Engeström, and Lahikainen (2016) stated, “The object is projective and transitory, truly a moving horizon. However, it is also specific and concrete, crystallized, embodied and reproblematized” (p. 247)—in this case, a claim that is made and remade in the pitch and Q&A via talk, slides, and demonstration technology. This claim is fluid enough to be cocreated with the audience, but it is anchored in the limits of the technology and the markets in which it could be deployed." To reiterate: the "object’s projective state is not pre-determined" I'm guessing this also goes with the "multiplicity in terms of ontological indeterminacy" I just don't get it because it's like he's qualifying AT while at the same time admitting that people in AT have already thought of this. Isn't that the function of the Sannino, Engeström, and Lahikainen (2016) quote?
In any case, Spinuzzi makes the case that the object of entrepreneurial work ought to be understood in terms of sense integration rather than sense making. I wonder if integration should be read as splicing rather than weaving.
But that still leaves the second and third. "Second, I argue that this claim-object is not just projective but also open-ended, and this open-endedness allows it to claim potential value for multiple adjacent markets (including ones unforeseen by the innovator, such as the “kinky market”) through multiple eventual iterations." That is, contra AT? "the object does not have to settle into a single projection to unite (or interesse) these activities: On the contrary, as long as its multiple projections are relatively coherent, they are an advantage for reaching multiple markets." Don't really get the distinction between relatively coherent and single.
I can see how Spinuzzi would be interested in OOW, in a kind of coherent incoherence of different perspectives.
Third. "Third, the object’s emergent coherence was threatened by the varying cycles of the intersecting activities that sought to transform it: the training program, the potential business sectors, the governor’s office, the university, and the innovator all followed different cycles and sought to transform the object according to their own timetables. Synchronizing such cycles is key to maintaining the object’s coherence—and a necessary, underexplored component of activity networks." Synchronizing. Oh that's interesting. "a necessary, underexplored component of activity networks" But does Spinuzzi explore it at all?
"This account works well for stable, long-term activities such as the ones in Leontiev’s (2009) famous illustrations of hunting parties and fishing communities (Leontiev, 1978). It also works well for describing transformations in centrally planned pursuits such as agriculture, manufacturing, and education that were prevalent in the Soviet Union of Leontiev’s day. However, it works less well for the newly prevalent forms of work just mentioned above, in which objects are emergent, rather than predetermined and are shared across activities, rather than contained within a single activity. Much of what we call “knowledge work” fits in this category, as does entrepreneurship." The "it" here is the account of the object, which goes so far as third-generation AT I think.
"These different cycles had to be carefully aligned to produce a coherent training program, as we have argued elsewhere (Spinuzzi et al., 2016), and it happens in part through multiple representations—from applications to market reports to websites to the final pitch (Figure 1)." This is interesting because coherence or synching as I have been calling it is produced through a genre ecology. This is unlike OOW because there's mediation first of all (unless we want to call the cités mediation) but also because there's multiplicity. There's multiple cités though... Ok, sure, but they're not shared. The cités are in-built and something "everyone" can share, whereas the genres in AT are specific to specific communities. General applicability. That's a phrase I was looking for. Do the genres in AT get at a general validity? Maybe, but it would be very much placed rather than placeless.
I wonder if a description such as this would mimic a kind of situation, like the one where the co-opt is trying to figure out how to pay people equitably. "“Keeping all of those constituencies happy is an art unto itself,” Lyle added. And part of this art had to do with ensuring that the different cycles could mesh appropriately to benefit entrepreneurs, rather than tearing them apart. Ultimately the program was built around the public-sector cycle, and in Lyle’s judgment this annual cycle led to “unnatural behavior.” For instance, the program had to prioritize firms that had already commercialized their products in Korea: Those firms had already learned how to package, deliver, and provide customer support for products, so the learning curve for global markets was shallow enough to fit into the annual cycle. Thus, across the events depicted in Figure 1—especially during the initial evaluation of applications—the GIP took actions to disallow innovators whose work could not fit within the annual time frame. It was not enough to have a solid innovation, a good idea, or even an attractive value proposition. Beyond these, the entrepreneurs had to maintain the tactical and strategic coherence of their arguments across the entire program (see our argument in Spinuzzi et al., 2016). This coherence was maintained in large part by progressively rerepresenting and iterating the value proposition across the many textual and spoken genres depicted in Figure 1." Maybe OOW and AT are only different at the level of place.
*This can't be original research I don't think because it's just recycling research originally put forth elsewhere. This article itself is derivative of a different article that lays out the whole research project, and in fact the derivative would have to cite the original one.
**"Engeström went on to suggest that addressing the phenomenon may involve developing a fourth generation of activity theory. I have attempted to contribute to that development through this article’s work on the object."
https://utexas.box.com/s/5cjgbpbej0q2d7av1wld5cspfdbdx0yb
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