In this session, the concept of technology exaptation is introduced. With examples and descriptions, it is argued that exaptation can be a valuable approach to consider new applications for existing technology projects. This is a session done with the University of Lorraine, Nancy, in 2021.

1. Technology
Exaptation &
Innovation
48h Brevets Dormants 2021
Ferran Giones

2. • What if there was an alternative path to develop technology innovations?
• Innovations that can be as successful as…
University of Stuttgart 2
Starting point

3. • What if there was an alternative path to develop technology innovations?
University of Stuttgart 3
Starting point
https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-17-499

4. From the dominant view…
02.12.2020
University of Stuttgart I Institute of Entrepreneurship and Innovation Science 4
• Our dominant view of technology innovation is the “market pull” perspective:
Starting point
Research &
Development
Production
Commercialization
/ Marketing
Customer
demand /
need

5. Tech / Research
& Development
Production
Commercialization
/ Marketing
Need?
02.12.2020
University of Stuttgart I Institute of Entrepreneurship and Innovation Science 5
…to the actual situation
• But in the science research context, we are often in a ”technology push”
situation.
Starting point

6. University of Stuttgart I Institute of Entrepreneurship and Innovation Science 6
Source: Brem, A., & Voigt, K.-I. (2009). Integration of market pull and technology push in the corporate front end and innovation management—Insights from the German software industry. Technovation, 29(5), 351–367.
Starting point
• Is there an option to break this duality?
• Narrow focus – customer need
• No attention to alternatives:
• Possibility to miss great opportunities
• R&D projects lost if they don't fulfill
expressed need
• Incremental technologies
Market Pull
• Difficult to find the right application
• Easiest application becomes the most
likely first application
• Longer path to market entry likely
• Disconnected technologies with
market reality / disruptive
Technology Push

7. Alternative paths to
de-link and re-link
technology and applications

8. 8
What does a magnetron
and your microwave oven
have in common?
Universität Stuttgart
University of Stuttgart I Institute of Entrepreneurship and Innovation Science

9. 9
What does a magnetron
and your microwave oven
have in common?
Universität Stuttgart
University of Stuttgart I Institute of Entrepreneurship and Innovation Science
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cavity_magnetron#/media/File:Magnetron2.jpg
The high power pulses were generated from a device the size of a
small book and broadcast from an antenna only centimeters long,
reducing the size of practical radar systems by orders of
magnitude.[4] New radars appeared for night-fighters, anti-
submarine aircraft and even the smallest escort ships,[4] and from
that point on the Allies of World War II held a lead in radar that their
counterparts in Germany and Japan were never able to close. By
the end of the war, practically every Allied radar was based on a
magnetron

10. 10
What does a magnetron
and your microwave oven
have in common?
It took a few years to jump from
one to another application.
Universität Stuttgart
University of Stuttgart I Institute of Entrepreneurship and Innovation Science
A brief history of magnetrons
•1920s: American engineer Albert W. Hull invents the first magnetron while
working for General Electric. [1]
•1934: Arthur L. Samuel of Bell Telephone Laboratories invents the cavity
magnetron. [2]
•1936–7: Soviet scientists Nikolay Alekseyev and Dmitrii Malyarov build a
four-segment cavity magnetron. Although details of their work filters
through to Germany, it remains unknown in Britain and the United
States. [3]
•1939: Two physicists, John Randall and Harry Boot, working at the
University of Birmingham, England independently develop a much more
powerful magnetron that is compact enough to fit into ships, planes,
and submarines. [4]
•1940s: American engineer Percy Spencer accidentally discovers that
microwaves produced by a magnetron have enough power to heat and
cook food. He patents the microwave oven in the 1950s.
•1943: The British cavity magnetron is deployed for the first time. [3]
•1976: MIT researchers George Bekefi and Thaddeus Orzechowski
develop the relativistic magnetron, which is roughly 10–100 times more
powerful than the cavity magnetron. They achieve a power of 900MW,
compared to the 10MW or so that cavity magnetrons were then capable of
producing. [5]
•2009: University of Michigan researchers sponsored by the US Air
Force announce the development of a more compact, higher power
magnetron that could improve the resolution of radar navigation.
https://www.explainthatstuff.com/how-magnetrons-work.html

11. 11
What does a Magnetron
and a Microwave have in
common?
It took a few years to jump
from one to another
application, view from the
patents…
Universität Stuttgart
University of Stuttgart I Institute of Entrepreneurship and Innovation Science

12. Technology decoupling for purposeful exaptation
Danneels, E. (2007). The process of technological competence leveraging. Strategic
management journal, 28(5), 511-533.
• Decoding the process behind the new function, can we make it more systematic?

13. Understanding Exaptation
• Remember: Innovation = new combination of need and solution
• Further examples: new uses of drugs, often discovered by “users” (i.e., doctors)
• Exaptation is a technology repurposed for a different use
• Here: existing solution (engine) applied to existing (but unusual) need
MIG-21 engine – fighter jet MIG-21 engine: fire extinguisher
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7Ss3BMrscE

14. Examples for exaptation

15. Examples for exaptation
A classic example of a technical innovation that illustrates both the processes
of adaptation and exaptation is the compact disk. Originally developed in the
late 1960s at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, WA, like
most inventions the compact disk was an adaptive design for a specific task:
solving the problem of poor sound quality and wear and tear suffered by vinyl
phonograph records. Its inventor, James T. Russell, developed the system based
on the idea of using light as a medium because he envisioned a system that
would record and replay sounds without physical contact between its parts. The
CD-ROM was therefore patented in 1970 as a digital-to-optical recording and
playback system.
However, researchers at the lab with large quantities of experimental data
exapted CD-ROM technology for another use: a data storage medium for
computers. This was a function the CD-ROM was not designed for, but
nevertheless proved very effective. As a result, during the 1970s the lab refined
CD-ROM technology for any form of data, and set the stage for the eventual
commercialization of the technology both the music and computing industries.
Source: Dew, N., Sarasvathy, S. D., & Venkataraman, S. (2004). The economic implications of exaptation.
Journal of Evolutionary Economics, 14(1), 69–84. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00191-003-0180-x

16. Examples for exaptation
Sildenafil, the chemical name for Viagra, is an artificial
compound that was originally synthesized and studied
to treat hypertension (high blood pressure) and
angina pectoris (a form of cardiovascular disease).
Source: Dew, N., Sarasvathy, S. D., & Venkataraman, S. (2004). The economic implications of exaptation.
Journal of Evolutionary Economics, 14(1), 69–84. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00191-003-0180-x

17. Examples for exaptation
Source: Dew, N., Sarasvathy, S. D., & Venkataraman, S. (2004). The economic implications of exaptation. Journal of
Evolutionary Economics, 14(1), 69–84. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00191-003-0180-x
Historical accounts suggest that the laser is another technology with a development
history full of exaptations. Without using the term “exaptation”, Rosenberg (1996)
recounts how the laser has been co-opted for numerous new roles. The name laser,
an acronym derived from "light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation,
describes how a laser beam is produced. A product of fundamental scientific re-
search, the underlying science was worked out by Einstein in a paper produced in
1916 (Rosenberg, 1996) but the invention of the laser is attributed to Charles H.
Townes, who shared a Nobel prize for his pioneering work on the laser in the early
1950s. The first working laser was constructed in 1960 by Theodore Maiman, since
which time the laser has been exapted into a wide range of applications. Among
those exaptations are the following:
Microsurgery: such as remedying detachedr etinas, tumor removal and gall bladder
surgery. In the case of retinal surgery, accidents and the disease retrolental
fibroplasia can both cause retinal detachment, which causes permanent blindness
without prompt treatment. Surgeons use a procedure that applies heat with a laser
beam to cause scarring that prevents the retina from detaching again.

18. 18
Defining Exaptation
Universität Stuttgart
On Technology Exaptation as a „perspective“
Defining technology exaptation:
… the term ‘‘exaptation’’ refers to an operation, a process, of changing
the function of a feature—what Gould refers to as a ‘‘quirky functional
shift’’ (2002: 1217).
As Mokyr describes it, ‘‘The basic idea is that a technique that was
originally selected for one trait owes its later success and survival to
another trait which it happens to possess.’’ (Mokyr, 2000: 57).
The importance of the idea of exaptation is that features of
organisms—or technologies—can have non-adaptive origins, that is,
they might evolve for one reason, or for no apparent reason, and then
later be co-opted for a new role, that is, be ‘‘exapted.’
Source: Dew, N. (2007) ‘Pre-adaptation, exaptation and technology speciation: a comment on
Cattani (2006)’, Industrial and Corporate Change, 16(1), pp. 155–160. doi: 10.1093/icc/dtl036.
University of Stuttgart I Institute of Entrepreneurship and Innovation Science

19. Exaptation as further opportunities for existing technologies!
Belussi, F., Sedita, S., Ganzaroli, A., & Orsi, L. (2015). Evolving through innovation and knowledge reutilisation: The case of
L’Oréal. In F. Belussi, & L. Orsi (Eds.), Innovation, alliances, and networks in high-tech environments. Abingdon: Routledge

20. A revised Tech push model –viewpoint of exaptation
Paulina Lewandowski, 2015

21. Universität Stuttgart 22
Why does this matter?
Exaptation and radical (new) uses of a technology:
… radical uses strongly
correlate with long jumps.
This raises the issue of why
radical innovations happen
when technologies are
transferred to very different
markets
Source: Andriani, P., Ali, A., & Mastrogiorgio, M. (2017). Measuring Exaptation and Its Impact on Innovation, Search, and Problem Solving. Organization Science, 28(2), 320–338.
https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2017.1116

22. Example Kewazo
17 January 2019
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23. Example Kewazo
17 January 2019
30
Katharina Grib
https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/kewazo

24. Thank you!
e-mail
University of Stuttgart
Pfaffenwaldring 19 – Arena 2036, Stuttgart, Germany
Dr. Ferran Giones
Ferran.giones@eni.uni-stuttgart.de
Institute of Entrepreneurship and Innovation Science