What happens after a hype? How changing expectations affected innovation activities in the case of stationary fuel cells

Abstract

Innovation processes are influenced by the dynamics of expectations. This paper addresses the question of what happens after a hype. It takes a closer look at the case of stationary fuel cells, for which a hype could be identified in 2001 followed by a clear downscaling of expectations and disappointment. Innovation activities, however, remained largely unaffected by the disappointment. We offer two explanations. First, only generalised expectations were adjusted after the hype, while overarching expectations (frames) remained stable and continued to legitimate the technology. Second, emerging institutional structures lead to increasing positive externalities thus stabilising ongoing innovation activities. These institutionalisation processes, again, were supported by a transformation of promises into requirements during the hype and the fact that the frames continued to legitimise the technology afterwards. We conclude with the proposition to differentiate disappointments according to which type of expectations changes after the hype.

Keywords:

• hype cycle
• expectation dynamics
• disappointment
• innovation processes
• stationary fuel cells

Notes

It is not always clear what is measured on the y-axis of hype cycle graphs. Some writers refer to ‘visibility’ of an innovation without defining it (e.g. Fenn 2006). In this article, we will take media attention as the variable that can be measured in quantitative terms and plotted in a graph (cf. method section).

Gaps between promises and actual technological achievements are not always straightforward to identify, and these results are subject to flexible interpretations (Konrad 2004, 2006). Under favourable conditions, the achievement of the expected technological results can be regarded as merely delayed (and the expectations adjusted), while a negative interpretation might regard them as not achievable and abandon the expectations.

The Austrian newspapers Standard and Presse as well as the Swiss Tagesanzeiger were excluded from the frequency analysis because their archives did not reach back to 1993.

We had to test a number of search criteria in order to determine whether an article was dedicated to stationary or mobile fuel cells. A combination of the term ‘Brennstoffzelle’ with ‘Energie’ or ‘Strom’ or ‘Haus’ was finally used as the proxy for stationary applications, and a combination of ‘Brennstoffzelle’ with ‘Motor’ or ‘Bord’ or ‘Fahrzeug’ or ‘Antrieb’ for mobile applications. In our search we made sure that the two categories stationary and mobile were mutually exclusive. We therefore get a residual number of articles, in which either both applications were mentioned or portable fuel cells or fuel cells in general.

Discourses as ‘structured and structuring structures’ (Keller 2005) may influence actors’ practices by offering normative orientations, rules of signification for meaning constitution or legitimisation for action. So do collective expectations as they provide justification for innovation activities and guide the strategic allocation of resources to a specific product or technology. Finally, discourses form orientation points for the coordination of heterogeneous actors in the same way as collective expectations do.

The magnitude of this peak is comparable with media attention peaks in other cases (see Newig 2004). The death of Lady Diana Spencer in 1997, as an illustrative though somehow different example, was covered by 170 articles in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, while 120 articles dealt with fuel cell technology in the same newspaper in 2001.

Note that we did not explicitly analyse whether and how far expectations were commonly shared or how they really affected innovation activities, but we conducted a discourse analysis of a small sample of professional magazine articles that showed that the public discourse mainly reflects the ideas expressed in the discourse among fuel cell professionals (Ruef 2005).

We understand the concept of frame according to its use in the literature on discourse analysis, see (Keller 2005) or (Gamson and Modigliani 1989). The German term Deutungsmuster can also be used in a similar sense.

We will not talk about expectations at the micro-, meso- and macro-level (cf. van Lente 1993, 182ff.) because this might cause some confusion whether this means that the subject (who holds an expectation) is acting at a specific level or the object (what the expectation is about) relates to that level.

The period is termed re-discovery because the actual discovery of the fuel cell principle goes back to the end of the nineteenth century and the technology went through a long period of neglect or very limited innovation activity.

This idea had not been very present before: The term ‘virtual power plant’ explicitly appeared for the first time in the daily press only in 2003 while it had already been mentioned occasionally in the weekly press (Zeit and Spiegel) from 2000 on.

This vision had only once been alluded to in the rediscovery period (1993–1997) but appeared explicitly in the press only from 2001 on.

See the work of Eames et al. (2006), in which the authors identify six competing narrative themes within the overarching vision of a hydrogen economy. The frames identified here link up to these themes.

See OECD, Compendium of Patent Statistics (2007) (www.oecd.org/sti/ipr-statistics) for data on fuel cell patents.

The development of single conferences on the subject is shaped differently. It shows a considerable increase from 2000 on, peaking in 2002 and decreasing somewhat since then (results not depicted here). The development of conference activities resembles the attention curve in the mass media, except for the fact that the peak ‘follows’ a year later (2002 instead of 2001-peak in the daily press) and we can assume that single conferences are subject to the influence of public attention. Conference series, however, not only require a stable institutional structure to be organised but also continued interest from participants in order to be kept up. We thus interpret conference series as an indicator for sustained interest in the subject.

Hydrogen and fuel cells have also become a prominent subject on the European political agenda. The commitment of the EU has especially increased since 2003 when the European Initiative for Growth assigned the projects ‘Hycom’ and ‘Hypogen’ extra funds of [euro]2.8 billion for the support of hydrogen and fuel cell technologies for 2005–2015. Recently, the activities at the EU level culminated in the launch of a Joint Technology Initiative on Hydrogen and Fuel Cells (https://www.hfpeurope.org/hfp/jti).

The joint project of Siemens and several utilities (with EU and US public funding) for a 1 MW-fuel cell combined with a small gas turbine had to be given up in 2002, because no such small turbine was available on the market.

In fact, frames as well as generalised expectations also represent institutions and are thus part of the institutionalisation process, although we have discussed them separately for analytical reasons.

In our view, frames as broad societal (problem) scenarios are not technology-specific and thus rather influenced by issues on the broader societal and political agenda. The development of generalised expectations, on the other hand, depends on the innovation process and discourse activities of involved actors. Even if technological expectations usually appear in combination with one or several frames (we even assume that their ‘success’ might depend on the popularity of the associated framing), they can switch or use different frames.