Thomas Birtchnell

Stranded: An Eruption of Disruption

Abstract An editorial introduction to a special section on the disruptions to air travel triggered by Icelands Eyjafjallajökulls eruptions in April and May 2010. A spontaneously organized workshop and open call for papers gathered together analyses from different perspectives – systems theory, impromptu surveys, personal reflection, literary and philosophical probing. This introduction explores some of the connecting themes and highlights the strange, surprising and potently revealing nature of strandedness in a world of mobile lives.

Jugaad as systemic risk and disruptive innovation in India

Jugaad is the latest/trend in management and business reports of Indias awakening. The term refers to the widespread practice in rural India of jury-rigging and customizing vehicles using only available resources and know-how. While the practice is often accompanied by indigence and corruption in traditional interpretations, the notion of jugaad has excited many commentators on Indias emergence into the global economy in its promise of an inimitable Indian work ethic that defies traditional associations of otherworldliness and indolence – widely reported as inherent in Indias society and culture. Jugaad has been identified across Indias economy in the inventiveness of call-centre workers, the creativity of global transnational elites, and in the innovativeness of Indian product designs. The term has seen an unprecedented growth in popularity and is now proffered as a tool for development and a robust solution to global recession. Jugaad is now part of a wider method for working within resource constraints as ‘Indovation’. In this context, the trope is presented as an asset that India can nurture and export. This article argues that far from being an example of ‘disruptive innovation’, jugaad in practice is in fact part and parcel of Indias systemic risk and should not be separated from this framing. Viewed from this optic, jugaad impacts on society in negative and undesirable ways. Jugaad is a product of widespread poverty and underpins path dependencies stemming from dilapidated infrastructure, unsafe transport practices, and resource constraints. These factors make it wholly unsuitable both as a development tool and as a business asset. The article questions the intentions behind jugaads wider usage and adoption and explores the underlying chauvinism at work in the terms links to Indias future hegemonic potential.

Fabricating Futures and the Movement of Objects

Abstract This paper assesses possible futures concerning so-called 3D printing in relation to socio-technical systems and consumption and production. Drawing on an Economic and Social Research Council funded project, the paper details the results of research exploring possible futures of the manufacturing industry and impacts upon the transport of objects. Such ‘printing’, or ‘personal fabrication’, could permit many objects to be produced near to or even by consumers themselves on just-in-time ‘printing’ machines. Widely known about in engineering and design, the impacts of these technologies on social practices and transport have yet to be much examined by social science. These technologies may become as ubiquitous as networked computers, with consequences just as significant. The paper reports on this recent research that seeks to understand some economic, social and environmental implications of what may be a major new socio-technical system currently in the making and which might have major consequences for the trajectory of the twenty-first century.

3D Printing for Development in the Global South: The 3D4D Challenge

Will 3D printers become as commonplace as mobile phones in the megacities or the backwaters of the Global South? Thomas Birtchnell and William Hoyle assess the development potential of this new technique for producing three-dimensional objects, which resembles the way a paper printer produces pages of text. Will 3D printing for development become a key strategy for community action against enduring material poverty? Birtchnell and Hoyle consider this question through a centrepiece case study on the UK charity techfortrades 3D4D Challenge.

The adoption process and impact of additive manufacturing on manufacturing systems

Company pressure for manufacturers is mounting from two angles: increasing pressure of global competition, and rapid advancements in technology such as additive manufacturing (AM) that are altering the way that goods are manufactured. The purpose of this paper is to explore the adoption process of AM within a manufacturing system and its business impact.,Research was conducted to collect empirical data at two manufacturing case companies in the North West England. Both cases are located in areas of industrial recovery using AM engineering innovation for value creation.,Early findings showed that the implementation of AM caused a shift in value propositions and the creation of additional value streams (VSs) for the case study companies. AM was shown to compliment and strengthen traditional manufacturing VSs rather than replacing them.,Limitations include the generalizability due to the number and location of case companies included in this research.,It is worthwhile to explore the opportunities that AM brings with the existing customer base as it has the potential to add unexplored and untapped value. However, managers need to be mindful of the capability and resources required to put the VS into practice.,Both cases resulted in skill retainment and development due to the implementation of AM. Hence, the innovation contributed to regional economic recovery and business survival.,This empirical research is one of the early field explorations focussing on the impact of AM on VS structures. Hence, this paper contributes to the area of technology enhanced manufacturing systems.

Less Talk More Drone: Social Research with UAVs.

There is a growing body of work in geography and sociology on the impact of drones on warfare, surveillance and civil protest. This paper assesses the challenges of using drones for teaching human geography and spatial social sciences. Affordable and expensive drones are now available in the market place; however, there has been next to no reflection on how drones might impact upon the social sciences as a research tool. Yet, unmanned flying vehicles pose some profound possibilities for social and cultural inquiry and aerial data collection.

The mobilities and post-mobilities of cargo

Cargo is moved from factories through global production networks via supply chains to consumers, but this process is hidden from them by what Raymond Williams termed the magic system of marketing and what Allan Sekula and Noël Burch call the forgotten space of containerization. This paper addresses recent concern that the mobilities paradigm has neglected two domains relevant to cargo: global production networks and global cultures of consumption. These domains are examined in relation to three key elements in this paper: distribution, consumption and marketing. In assessing moving consumption from the perspective of the mobilities paradigm, this paper recommends that the future of cargo, the ease of which consumers take utterly for granted, is far from clear-cut from a strategic foresight perspective.

From ‘Hindolence’ to ‘Spirinomics’: Discourse, Practice and the Myth of Indian Enterprise

Abstract A resurgence in Hindu nationalism in India is accompanying a burgeoning interest in Indian spiritual values in global aspirational and management literature. This article traces the shift in understandings of the economic valency of Indian spiritual values outlining the popular relation of Hindu values to economic growth and management and leadership discourse and practice.

The missing mobility: friction and freedom in the movement and digitization of cargo

Abstract Logistics, freight, cargo and containerization are understood to be a final frontier for mobilities research; however, a burgeoning body of literature is now engaging with this oversight. Of interest are various components in this complex: the mobility of the container through different transport modes; the techno-science of logistics and the telecommunications architecture in place to track and trace objects through global production networks; and the securitization and geopolitical consequences of free markets and flows through bottlenecks, hotspots and conflict zones. In this article, a fourth component is analysed, namely the increasing digitization of physical objects and the consequences for mass-production, -distribution and -consumption. The article argues that the mobilities paradigm is in a position to apply itself critically to the cargomobility system drawing on rich veins of inquiry in the current corpus. Putting this claim into practice, the article deploys two key mobilities social theories – that is, the friction of distance and freedom and unfreedom – to empirical research on the digitization of cargo through 3D printing technologies.

Elite formation in the third industrial revolution

1. The heroes This paper examines brings together two topics normally understood separately: the study of elites and the processes by which new ‘technologies’ develop. We discuss these in the context of the new technology known as additive or 3D printing. We examine how it was that elites came to be formed in this new and as yet still-to-befully-formed area of development. We show behind every elite are formations of complex mobilities. We extract and visualize public patent data from the early history of this technology and consider the mobilities of innovation across organizations, relationships and affiliations. Social network analysis (SNA) is used here to examine critically the popular notion that elites are uniquely and individually responsible for what may be significant game-changing innovations.