Extraordinary LED installations: events for user–innovation interaction

Abstract

Recent innovation research describes events as mechanism for innovation diffusion but does not explore their socio-material dimension. This study compares and conceptualises event settings that allow professional technology users to engage with an innovation before they adopt it. The focus is on temporary installations of light-emitting diodes (LEDs) in lighting trade fairs and light festivals. LEDs are currently transforming the lighting field. This study focuses on the time when LED products were already on the market but demand was still low. Based on ethnographic research, it shows that in this critical situation, events offered professional users formats for trying and evaluating LED technology in event-specific ways. While trade fair displays promoted the adoption of LED products, festival projects allowed professional LED users to creatively adapt and shape the new technology. Theoretically, this study combines social-scientific innovation research on events with social-constructivist studies on user–innovation interaction in a multi-level conceptual framework.

Keywords:

• Innovation users
• field-configuring events
• trade fairs
• festivals
• LED lighting

JEL Classification:

• O3

Acknowledgement

I particularly thank the reviewers for their valuable feedback.

Notes

¹ The first red-glowing diode was invented in 1962 by Nick Holonyak and his team at General Electrics (Manchester 1963). Since then, the tiny crystalline semiconductor chips have diversified in colours and become much more efficient in light output. In 1994, three Japanese scientists, Isamu Akasaki, Hiroshi Amano and Shuji Nakamura, invented the first bright blue LEDs, for which they were awarded with the 2014 Nobel Prize in Physics. The high-efficient blue LEDs were the long-sought-for missing piece in the development of white LED lighting for general lighting purposes, as envisioned since the 1960s (Johnstone 2007).

² Problems include flicker and colour degradation. Moreover, existing photometric measuring methods cannot fully capture the qualities of LED products. For instance, conventional ways of describing light colour in wave lengths and Kelvin have become problematic since LED colours cannot be precisely located on the black-body curve in the three-dimensional CIE 1931 colour space. A new standard by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI C78.377-2015) guarantees LED colour quality based on MacAdams ellipses (e.g. 2700 ANSI Kelvin for warm white).

³ The references (notes year-month) refer to field notes as listed in Table 3.

⁴ Other Lyon-based lighting events profit even more from the festival. In 2009, the LumiVille organisers founded the international conference ForumLED, which ran parallel to Fête des Lumières before it moved to Paris.

⁵ This was not the first time that the Lyon lighting department exported their art and skills. In fact, they regularly design lighting projects abroad, including an artistic installation in the Luminale city Frankfurt in 2010 (Bien 2010-07-06).