Christina Hellström

The innovating self: exploring self among a group of technological innovators

This paper explores the relevance of the concept of self in the process of independent technological innovation. In‐depth interviews were conducted with technological innovators from start‐up firms in IT, biotech and advanced services concerning the subjective and social forms of engagement in the innovation process. Emerging factors in the interview data revealed aspects pertaining to the innovator’s reflexive self‐conception, innovator ego‐involvement in the venture, forms of commitment and control, personal and social stakes, and various self‐oriented cognitive strategies. It is argued that the self‐concept allows the innovator to come into view as a social and subjective being who is involved in reflexive activities such as dynamic role‐taking, “is” vs “ought” reflections and social negotiations.

Subjective future as a mediating factor in the relation between pain, pain-related distress and depression

The coincidence of chronic pain, psychological distress and depression has been well documented in several studies. However, there is still debate about the type of causality linking these factors and whether psychological distress and depression precede or are a consequence of pain. This study contributes to this debate through an analysis of the latent structure behind these complex concepts. To test the hypothesis that subjective future (i.e. how the pain patient perceives the future) has an impact on pain, data were analysed from 660 chronic pain patients who were tested with The Multidimensional Pain Inventory (MPI), The Symptom Distress Checklist (SCL‐90) and a Future Scale, which was constructed from items of the Sense of coherence‐scale. By use of path analysis and structural equation modeling (S.E.M.) four latent constructs were tested: Pain, Interference, Distress and Subjective future. The results indicated that Subjective future has a strong impact on Distress, is a mediating variable, which contributes to conceptually explaining and practically nullifying the relationship between Pain and Distress, and finally that Pain is a concept, that changes with increasing duration.

Busy with pain: disorganization in subjective time in experimental pain.

The cold pressor test was used to investigate perception of time and change of mood in subjects experiencing pain. Using a within‐group design, 15 subjects were tested in a pain vs no‐pain condition. Subjects were requested to fill in the mood adjective checklist (MACL) concerning the mood factors of activity, calmness and pleasantness, and were interviewed about their perceptions before and immediately after each condition. The results indicated that subjects in the pain condition estimated retrospective time passage as significantly shorter, indicating a disorganization of temporal orientation (the relative dominance of past, present and future in a persons thought). In addition, results indicated that many of the subjects in the pain condition, although underestimating time, experienced time as long‐lasting. The main finding concerning mood was that the activity level was increased, and calmness and pleasantness were significantly reduced in the pain condition. The main conclusion is that pain per se changes the perception of duration of time intervals and temporal orientation within the same individual.

Time and Innovation in Independent Technological Ventures

This article explores the process of small-scale technological innovation through the concept of experienced and enacted time. By conducting a series of semi-structured, deep interviews with 10 entrepreneurial innovators around issues of time and their ventures, we were able to construct four higher order concepts: time as a force, time as a flow, time as relations and time as a personal, cognitive resource; as well as 12 subcategories depicting ways in which time and innovation are weaved together. The study concludes with a number of suggestions as to how previous research on innovation may be extended in the light of the present findings. Especially important in this respect is the call for a stronger emphasis in innovation research on intentionality, uncertainty creation, vision and social action as being significant denominators of this phenomenon.

Psychological Distress and Adaptation to Chronic Pain: Symptomatology in Dysfunctional, Interpersonally Distressed, and Adaptive Copers

Objectives: To investigate psychological symptomatology and distress in sub groups of chronic pain patients with different adaptation styles. Methods: Subjects were 660 patients with chronic musculoskeletal pain who were tested by the combined use of the two large and much used psychological inventories-the Multidimensional Pain Inventory and the Symptom Check list-90-Revised. Results: The results showed significant differences between the three adaptation profiles, dysfunctional, inter personally distressed, and adaptive copers. Adaptive copers were equally and less distressed than a sample from a normal population. Conclusion: This study calls attention to the risk of blind faith of the ‘objective ness’ of psychometric scales and of the use of them as the sole basis for designing treatments. More attention seems to be needed to get more information about the ‘healthy’ group of adaptive copers by extended clinical judgment.

The Present is Less than the Future Mental Experimentation and Temporal Exploration in Design Work

This article explores the dimensions of time and temporality in the context of product design. The study builds on a phenomenological approach, where in-depth, explorative interviews with six product designers were conducted. The results provide insights into how the designers use mental experimentation and imagination by actively envisioning various futures, or ‘possible worlds’ in the design process, and how they use these temporal explorations in conceiving of novel design concepts. Apart from temporality figuring as the designer drawing actively on past experiences, we were able to discern two additional cognitive factors affecting how designers use temporality: by projecting a future goal; and by investing this goal or image with an emotional loading, i.e. by ‘emoting a vision of the future’. Finally, these results are used to extend current thinking on the role of time and temporality in design processes, and suggest a line of further inquiry into the significance of affective dispositions and moods on temporal orientation in other creative contexts.

Achieving impact: impact evaluations and narrative simplification

ABSTRACT This study is concerned with how impact from research and innovation (R&I) programmes is accounted for in impact evaluation reports. Establishing causal links between a research funding instrument and different effects, poses well known methodological difficulties. In the light of such challenges, textual accounts about causal links ought to be carefully written. Nevertheless, impact evaluation reports have a tendency towards unwarranted simplification as far as impact inferences are concerned. In this study, we illustrate how such simplifications – versions of the narrative device ellipsis – are accomplished. Using examples from three Swedish impact evaluation reports, we focus on the constituent components of longer impact accounts, that of the impact argument, to analyze the various ways that impact is narratively achieved through simplification. We believe this analysis can contribute to the methodology of impact evaluation, as well as spread light on some the difficulties in the historiography of innovation in general.