Y4795853 STUDENT EXAMINATION NUMBER Y4795853 MODULE NO: 2730134

MODULE TITLE:

Management of Technology

Module Tutor:

Lynne Baxter

Essay Title:

Question 2

Bartel and Garud (2009) discuss the role of narratives in the technology innovation process. Narratives give a coherence to the overall process which often lacks clarity.

Discuss Bartel and Garuds (2009) ideas in relation to the wider literature on developing products or processes in organisations. Select and describe in detail the narrative surrounding the development process of a technology. Critically evaluate the technology development process using your discussion of Bartel and Garud and the wider literature. Conclude with recommendations to improve the literature and the development of future technologies. Word Count: 5277

Y4795853 Introduction Technology has come to define the progress of humanity on earth. It is defined as a branch of knowledge that deals with creation. It can include subjects such as the industrial arts, engineering, applied science, and pure science. In a broader sense, it can be intangible as well as tangible; it can encompass things, programs, or thought processes. Innovation refers to the creation of better ideas, products or processes. New things are created that are novel; innovation assumes the next iteration should be better than the previous one. Whilst this term is broad, in this essay I will be talking about technological innovation when referring to the term innovation. Some take technology to be part of an ongoing conversation between generations and between social groups over their differing conceptions of what is desirable, possible or even real (Nye, 1997, pp.3). For the majority of companies, it is now the most important driver of and a requirement for competitive success (Baxter, 2012). The most successful firms throughout history have tended to be very innovative; as a result, huge amounts of money are spent every year trying to stay ahead of the curve and sustaining that competitive momentum. Research shows that companies are earning over one-third of sales from products developed within the last five years (Baxter, 2012). As well as product innovation, you can also be innovative with processes; efficient processes create efficiencies, and savings allowing companies to protect their margins: History, which focuses exclusively on facts, cannot tell us a useful story, it can at best tell us a sequence of events (Nye, 1997, pp.7). Narratives are present everywhere we go, they infiltrated all mediums, and are present on the TV, internet blogs, and so on. Narratives are immensely powerful devices used by corporations to aid innovation. They have been suggested as a means to provide important alternative perspectives on the innovation process. In this essay, I look at the role of these narratives in innovation and assessing the claims put forward by Bartel and Garud (2009) regarding their coherence abilities. This is looked at in relation to the wider literature written on developing products and processes in organisations. I then describe the narrative surrounding the development process of PayPal, the popular online payments and money transfer service. PayPals technology development process is critically evaluated using my discussion of Bartel and Garud (2009) and the wider literature. I then conclude the piece with recommendations to improve the literature and the development of future technologies. Bartel and Garud Ideas Bartel and Garud (2009) investigated the role of narratives in the technology innovation process within organisations. Their research states three main requirements that need to be co-ordinated in order to allow innovation to take place. Firstly, individuals need to be able to recognise ideas that can generate novel products and services. Secondly, they need to be able to solve problems in real time, and lastly individuals need to be able to link present innovation efforts with past experiences and future aspirations. The general thesis of this paper is the claim that innovation narratives provide the means for co-ordination in the innovation process through translation. Ideas are translated across entities in the organisation, which facilitates innovation in products and services. Innovation narratives enable real-time solving by translating ambiguous or equivocal (pp.107) situations and, over time, multiple narratives accumulate providing a generative memory that allows for the recombination of instances of past

Y4795853 innovation to inform current efforts, and future aspiration to aid the development of innovative products and processes. Recognition of ideas Bartel and Garud (2009) point out that the innovation process is far from simple. The generation of novel ideas is simply not enough; many factors relevant to business processes need to be aligned and co-ordinated. A number of authors stress the importance organisation designs and processes in aiding innovation. They have been put forward as a facilitator of productive co-ordination and quality social interactions (Doolin, 2003; Brunsson and Sahlin, 2000; Milgrom, 1988). Cultures are beneficial to organisations because they can provide a platform for social actions (Sole and Wilson, 2002), and can connect people from diverse backgrounds for the good of the company. Bartel and Garud (2009), however, comment that culture may introduce too much change and hold back innovation in organisations. They suggest a paradox when cultural values and norms become too ingrained, making it hard for people to react to change, and acknowledge that doing so might work against innovation by causing dysfunctional confrontation. Innovation thus requires cultures that can be both coherent and flexible. Innovation narratives are put forward as a means to solve the problem and promote co-ordination. A story tells of a set of events; narratives can tell stories of past innovation. Although they are not restricted to this, they are able to tell stories of future innovations as well as stories of events that are currently unfolding. The main proposal presented by Bartel and Garud (2009) is that these narratives can provide and symbolise boundaries of acceptable behaviour, provide a means of information sharing and inspire new ideas (pp.108). They are often interwoven, interrelated and context-dependent, and by building on each other, can remind us about different positions on fundamental questions, such as the relationship between humanity and nature, permeate technology development and social debate (Wickson, 2008, pp.315). The benefits of narratives for making sense of situations and the sharing of knowledge have been advocated by a number of authors (Nye, 1997; Fletcher, 2007; Godin, 2009). Whilst stories can provide benefits, a drawback exists in the form of traps. Sole and Wilson (2002) mention three specific traps that may lead stories to be inadequate or inappropriate: seductiveness, where stories are so compelling, seductive and vivid that listeners get too absorbed and fail to related it to their own experiences; single view, when one view is presented which leads to less relevancy to the activity and concerns of many individuals; and staticness, where the impact of the story is dependent on its delivery and the stories can suffer disconnection from the teller when written down. Sole says stories need to be regularly revised and updated to reconnect them with the present. Genesis of Novelty Ideas get lost in large institutional companies and layers of management. Taskorientated philosophies, such as the division of labour, slow down innovation (Ries, 2011). Bartel and Garud (2009) propose that through specific translation mechanisms, ideas can be generated by enabling people to comprehend, draw insight from and build on (other) ideas (pp.111).

Y4795853 Recombination of ideas Bartel and Garud (2009) mention the concept of boundary objects initially proposed by Star and Griesemer (1989). Boundary objects are defined as abstract or physical artefacts that have the capacity to bridge perceptual and practical differences among diverse actors to promote co-operation (Bartel and Garud, 2009 pp.110). Star (1989) pointed out a set of criteria for such objects which Wenger (1998) describes as follows: 1. Modularity: this enables each party to relate to a different aspect of the boundary object 2. Abstraction: this emphasizes common features at the expense of domainspecific ones. 3. Accommodation: this is regarding a variety of perspectives and interpretations. 4. Standardization: this is providing a unified way of dealing with issues (Zdunczyk, 2006, pp.5). This is where narratives gain their analytical and rhetorical force (Nye, 1997, pp.354). Hildreth and Kimble (2004) mention the problems of communication and co-operation between different disciplines, such as different departments within organisations. These are interconnected communities of workers united by similar goals. They are used as translation devices that can enable communication to take place between the relevant social connections. Bartel and Garud (2009) propose that innovation narratives can serve as boundary objects and believe narratives can carry out the dual processes of being coherent enough to allow individuals from different backgrounds to work well together and flexible enough for them to fit the experience around themselves for better understanding. A common context is created that sits in the middle (Star, 1989). Bartel and Garud (2009) present various contexts as examples of the use boundary objects, for example, for product development teams, manufacturing and information systems. Flexibility further enables individuals to compare them to their own experiences through frames of reference, making the story seem more familiar. Schon and Rein (1993) describe frames as a way of selecting, organising, interpreting, making sense of reality and provide guideposts for knowing, analyzing, persuading and acting (Godin, 2009, pp.1). Bartel and Garud (2009) argue that the paradoxical feature of coherence and flexibility makes narratives an important boundary object that facilitates idea recombination in the genesis of novelty, aiding the development of innovative products and processes (pp.111). Commercial development Another key requirement of innovation is the ability to bring ideas to reality. This requires real-time problem solving, the reason being that innovation is not a straightforward linear process but one that possesses many twists and turns, dead-ends and false starts (Ries, 2011). Very few people advocate the idea of linear innovation anymore (Edgerton, 2004), with some claiming the idea to be dead. (Rosenberg, 1994) Bartel and Garud (2009) say that a key task for organisations is to be able to leverage multiple perspectives and ideas from all parts of the organisation and to do this whilst avoiding problems. As mentioned earlier, there has been evidence in organisation theory that working in diverse teams can generate conflict and impede innovation (Pelled, 1996). Therefore, any mechanism in place needs to deal with this issue. Real time coordination One of the most important points made by Bartel and Garud (2009) is the importance of real-time co-ordination and problem solving in aiding the commercialisation of ideas. Narratives arise out of co-ordination problems as individuals try to understand the situation. These narratives come from all over the organisation and come together through development as people seek coherence through others interpretations.

Y4795853 Individuals use narratives to frame their problems, allowing for greater resonance through translation. Many problem definitions will arise as a result, and by having a range of definitions, the social mechanism results in a wider range of solutions from which to choose, and therefore a greater number of innovations. Bartel and Garud (2009) state that narratives are especially useful for combining ideas. They say this because different people may have different speculations and these, when juxtaposed, can lead to idea generation. The idea of multiple narratives is popular in this area (Doolin, 2003) and has been used to explain organisational change. The reason comes from the benefits of pluralism, because in contrast to just one perspective, a view from more angles provides a better picture of a complex phenomenon (Doolin, 2003; Bassett, 2007). Bartel and Garud (2009) see this as key to how innovation narratives help sustain innovation over time. Multiple narratives build up to serve as a repertoire and generative memory for individuals to use. These capabilities are particularly useful given the non-linearity of the innovation process as described above Sustaining innovation Obviously, in order to stay successful, innovation needs to be sustained over time. Even large firms cannot survive without doing so. Kodak was once considered to be invincible in the photography world, but this early dominance has not lasted as they have failed to sustain their initial innovation. A way to do this is to accumulate knowledge from the past, in case it has any use in the future. This is a co-ordination challenge, because having ideas in the bank is not enough in itself; ideas need to be connected to appropriate business opportunities. Coordinating the past, present, and future One vital mechanism that needs to be in place is the ability to co-ordinate past, present and future efforts. Bartel and Garud (2009) claim that a major requirement for innovation is the ability to learn from experience. They (2009) say that narratives enable individuals to attend simultaneously to the past, present and the future. The simultaneous use of memory and imagination enables individuals to bridge the past, present and future. The authors strongly believe that innovation narratives provide powerful co-ordination abilities, as narratives can be retold, reinterpreted and applied to a range of different situations (Bartel and Garud, 1990 pp.114; Sole, 2002). Ideas that fail can lead organisations to pivot and explore a new idea whilst all the time looking back and seeing if anything in the past can be of benefit (Ries, 2011). The general picture is that of praise for narratives, as many authors see benefits in the use of narratives for organisations. This praise mostly relates to the coherence abilities in aiding understanding among entities in organisations. Bartel and Garud (2009) mention structural and provision narratives types, but I have chosen to omit this section, as the literature I have come across does not seem to examine this in depth and my technology innovation process does not mention specific narrative types. As PayPal is a relatively young company, I have chosen to focus less on this particular idea of Bartel and Garud (2009); having only started in 1998, the company has not had the time to show sustained innovation such as Kodak, and therefore has experienced limited scope for co-ordination.

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PayPal PayPal is one of the most recognised brands on the Internet. Started in 1998 as a person-to-person electronic payment network by programmer Max Levchin and hedge-fund manager Peter Thiel, PayPal is now the dominant e-payments platform on the internet (Eisenmann and Barley, 2007). It has since taken over and been literally taken over by eBay, and most recently it has entered the mobile payments industry. PayPal has an interesting innovation narrative involving tension-filled plots and many powerful actors with conflicting stories to tell. PayPal started life as FieldLink, a crypto library for mobile devices. Levchin developed an interest in mobile security whilst at university and attended a random lecture taken by Peter Thiel, the investor extraordinaire, who was an early investor in Facebook, LinkedIn, and Friendster. They sat down for breakfast the next day and Levchin began proposing his ideas. The two established an immediate rapport and decided to form a company based on the initial idea of security in hand-held devices; Thiel became the CEO of the newly created company and Levchin became CTO. After much thought and many changes to the business plan, Levchin decided that it would be a good idea to create a wallet application and store money in mobile devices (he was very much ahead of his time, considering all the talk about the cashless society) (Bishop, 2012). Using Palm Pilot PDAs, basically IOUs could be transferred across encrypted devices through infrared. The companys (now renamed Confinity) first round of funding, a total of $4.5 million, was actually transferred through an early prototype. This plan nearly backfired; his team worked frantically for five days to get a working prototype. Levchin was fully aware that this stage in the development was critical: We have this security company; how could I possibly use a mock-up for something worth $4.5million; what if it crashes? What if it shows something? (Livingston, 2008, pp.4). In the end, the prototype was completed one hour before presentation. Aggressive hiring began as soon as Levchin and Thiel received funding. Soon after, they built a demo website as a promotional stunt which was functional but was not the focus of the business; it was ugly and its only purpose was to persuade users to download the Palm Pilot version. However, by 2000, the company realised that people were trying to use the website for online transactions; slowly, the growth of the website began to

Y4795853 outstrip the growth of the palm device. It was only when they started getting contacted by sellers on eBay that they realised this was where the main business would be found. The founders were initially hostile to these new users, and the new direction: So for a while we were fighting tooth and nail, crazy eBay people: go away, we dont want you We were like, Why?, So we told them, No, Dont do it (Livingston, 2008, pp.6). After the business epiphany, they spent the next 12 months working on the web version, which is what PayPal is essentially today. They were eventually forced to kill the handheld version to focus on what they finally decided was the main business focus. The popularity gained from the operations of eBay had proven to be a major evolutionary extension of their initial innovation (Schilling, 2005). By 2000, fraud was rampant, costing the payments industry millions of dollars, and costing PayPal over $10million per month. Straight away, Levchin and Thiel knew fraud was going to be a significant problem; they had received warning from just about every person they talked to in the industry. In March 2000, the company decided on a merger with competitor X.com in a 50-50 deal (FindLaw, 2000). Serial entrepreneur Elon Musk headed X.com, which had begun in 1999 as an online bank, but was plagued with fraud problems (Encyclopedia of World Biography n. d.). Musk believed that person-to-person transactions were the future and soon abandoned the original concept to concentrate on payment transfer and therefore positioned the company in direct competition with Confinity (Encyclopedia of World Biography n. d.). Internal problems started emerging soon after the merger; the two camps had different ideas about what the system should be built on: Levchin and Thiel thought it should be on the Unix operating system but Musk was adamant that it should be on Microsoft Windows. This tension created caused Thiel to take a sabbatical in order to calm the situation. The power struggle then led Levchin to go off and start side projects within PayPal, mostly looking into fraud prevention and security, which left Musk to run the company. However, by October, Elon Musk had left and had been replaced by Peter Thiel as CEO. Musk had no option but to leave when the Windows-Unix argument came to a head; Levchins position was, We cant switch to Windows now. This fraud thing is most important to the company. You cant allow any additional changes. Its one of these things where you want to change one big thing at a time, and fraud is a pretty big thing (Livingston, 2008, pp.7). During the time Musk was CEO, Levchin and an intern investigated fraud prevention systems that looked at money trails inside the PayPal system. They created a part visualisation part graph-balancing tool that would allow computers to predict where particular expensive losses would be and then present the losses to investigators so that they could make a quick decision on whether or not to pursue the issue. Levchin thought, You dont really want some computer saying, $2.00 for you, nothing for you. You need a human with a brain to say, Hmm. This looks like fraud, but I really dont think it is (Livingston, 2008, pp.9). Once this system was in place, PayPal saw a huge reduction in fraud, which had never been seen before. As Levchin put it, PayPal was a security company pretending to be a financial services company. This was a huge innovation at the time that set them apart from competitors who were slow to realise the level of risk associated with online payments. Perhaps the conflict with Musk regarding the operating systems which led Levchin to go off and look into fraud was what created that innovation and allowed them, ultimately, to stay ahead. One rival, eMoneyMail, was forced to shut down because it had suffered 25% fraud (Livingston, 2008). PayPal went public with an IPO in February 2002 (Wolverton, 2002), but by July 2002, it had been announced that eBay, despite owning

Y4795853 a competitor called Billpoint, had purchased PayPal for $1.4 billion in stock and had shut down Billpoint (Eisenmann and Barley, 2007). As of 2011, PayPal counts as eBays biggest source of revenue (Kang, 2005). PayPals latest product, called PayPal Here, is a mobile payments system that accepts credit cards through mobile phones (PayPal Here Webpage, n. d.). It allows small business merchants to accept money quick and easily through a mobile phone (Barr, 2012). This expansion into the mobile world is perhaps evidence that PayPal is going back to its past. Whilst Levchin may have left, the PayPal Here concept is quite similar to the original Palm devices. The industry is currently headed by Square, which was founded by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey. The switch in the focus of PayPal may signify the ending of an S-curve in terms of online money transfer and a start of a new one in mobile money transfers. The winner remains to be seen, but it does not look good if events occur in accordance with the First Mover Advantage (Schilling, 2005). Was PayPals innovation process conventional? One very popular idea put forward in innovation literature is the idea of organisation design being cultural and social organisations whereby people from diverse backgrounds come together to promote innovation. Bartel and Garud (2009) take the view that this diversity might work against innovation, and that narratives can provide the solution. This is supported by the evidence from PayPal, which shows that the culture created initially when bankers were brought in from X.com stifled innovation and created various conflicts (Jackson, 2004). There was a significant cultural divide in the office once the two firms had merged. PayPal had established a policy of hiring that was different from that of most companies at the time; they had built their culture around people like themselves, a very specific type of candidate; they wanted workaholics who were not MBAs, consultants, frat boys, or jocks. Levchin recalls, "This guy came in, and I asked what he liked to do for fun. He said, 'I really enjoy playing hoops. I said, 'We can't hire the guy. Everyone I knew in college who liked to play hoops was an idiot'" (OBrien, J. M., 2007, pp.1). Levchin was a bilingual immigrant from the Ukraine and Thiel was born in Germany. They wanted competitive, well-read, bilingual individuals. Levchin thought that hiring these types of people from the middle of the country would ensure that there would be fewer preconceived notions and fewer social distractions: "Most of them were very introverted anyway," Levchin recalls, "They'd come in, eat crappy food all day, and sleep under their desks" (OBrien, J. M., 2007, pp.2). PayPal had an anti-establishment culture; they were antigovernment and anti-mainstream. Former COO David Sacks recalls how the lack of meetings created a culture of many workers and few managers (OBrien, J. M., 2007). Elon Musk, who was ousted by Thiel and Levchin, felt that he did not deserve his fate and that his biggest flaw was being cut from different cloth (OBrien, J. M., 2007, pp.2): "Peter, Max, and I are not directly aligned philosophically," he says, "Peter's philosophy is pretty odd. It's not normal. He's a contrarian from an investing standpoint and thinks a lot about the singularity. I'm much less excited about that" (OBrien, J. M., 2007, pp.2).

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A number of employees from X.com came from the banking industry. One of them, Jeremy Stoppelman, described the atmosphere as awkwardness turned into total dysfunction and warfare The culture was really an intellectual pissing contest, and some people didnt like that (OBrien, J. M., 2007, pp.3). However, Chad Hurley, the CEO of YouTube, said seeing Peter and Max and the guys come up with ideas and seeing how to make things work gave me a lot of insight. You may not have a business degree, but you see how to put the process into effect" (OBrien, J. M., 2007, pp.3). The culture at PayPal has fostered some very important innovations of the informationtechnology age, spawning companies such as YouTube, Yelp, LinkedIn, and Slide (Rosmarin, 2006). In total, it has been estimated that former PayPal employees run around $30 billion worth of businesses. (OBrien, J. M., 2007), which is truly remarkable, and some praise has to be given to the environment culture and employment strategies of PayPal. However, differences were put aside when both sides united to compete with a major rival, Google Checkout (Jackson, 2004). By creating a financial innovations team and having an open forum innovation lab (PayPal Labs, n. d.), they were able to use multiple perspectives and stories to come up with ingenious ideas involving both finance and technology to create innovations such as fund transfers via Skype and a virtual debit card that pulls money from the user's PayPal account using a 16-digit number, which changes with each transaction (The Economist, 2007, pp.1). PayPals victory in this area shows that diversity has prospered at the company despite the challenge of having to face many giant corporations. Bartel and Garud (2009) discuss three main requirements of innovation; first, they talk about the need to recognise and generate novel ideas to stay ahead in the technology innovation process. I do not think this idea is contestable; when PayPal first started, Thiel realised this attribute was very important and felt that it could be provided by Levchin. The pair experienced many ups, downs and dead-ends (including the initial Palm idea) before coming up with online payments. There is less evidence of boundary objects being used at PayPal even though they were very much needed

Y4795853 between the bankers coming in from X.com and the more technical minded personnel from Confinity, whose relationship Levchin called bloody (Levchin, n. d.). Conflict arose that caused what Jeremy Stoppelman described as total dysfunction and warfare, which could have been solved by the use of boundary objects. The empirical evidence from within PayPal suggests that there was not enough communication between entities and that the cultural divides and eventually led to the exit of the X.com head (Jackson, 2004, pg93). The ability to bring ideas to reality via real-time co-ordination is a fundamental requirement proposed by Bartel and Garud (2009). With regards to PayPal, when it became clear that there was room for only one company in the industry at that time (Jackson, 2004), the two competing parties merged, with differing ideas about what the product should be, in order for them to capture the market. Co-ordination had to happen quickly and problems had to be solved in real-time as there was no time to lose in a growing market, so much so that major actors had to be sacrificed to achieve this. The narrative evidence surrounding PayPal seems to suggest that there was a failure on the part of individuals to frame problems, and as a result, there was less innovation once the merger had happened. That said, there may not be enough evidence to confirm completely that this was the case and additional evidence might suggest that framing and translation had in fact happened but at a deeper level involving incremental innovations. However, Bartel and Garud (2009) talk about the need for multiple perspectives for real-time co-ordination, and while I agree with their point and think it makes sense, the story was different at PayPal. When it came to the second facet of their innovation narrative, the fraud protection innovation, this particular instance of innovation came from one persons ability to recognise a problem. This innovation was in fact created in isolation from most people in the organization. Although a case could be made for multiple narratives having come from Levchin, it was Thiel and the early developers from Confinity who actually set Levchin on the path of the fraud innovation. The overall product was conceived out of multiple narratives garnered from both organisations from a range of actors including bankers, marketers and technicians (Jackson, 2004). Longevity is achieved through the sustained innovation and co-ordination of instances in time. This is one of the more obvious points made by Bartel and Garud (2009). The innovation process in PayPal and perhaps within the industry with Square has come full circle back to the beginning of PayPal with the rise of mobile payments. This signifies a start of a new S-curve for the industry. The process proved to be non-linear, starting with an idea for which the market was not ready. PayPal can use their experience to aid their quest into the mobile payments business with PayPal Here and compete with the market leader Square. The fact that they pivoted their business model at the time to online payment, but still used their experiences of payments shows this co-ordination via narratives was present at PayPal. The two camps set up within PayPal led to particular narratives being told by different actors. These were seductive to the followers of each camp, and these story traps led to conflict. This is evidenced in the war over operating; eBays acquisition of PayPal and the subsequent replacement of management shows us that some of the narratives were not being regularly revised and possibly suggests that PayPal may have lost connection with its past innovation narratives.

Y4795853 Conclusion Overall, whilst some ideas were relevant, for the most part, the ideas of Bartel and Garud (2009) did not relate to the innovation process of PayPal. Although the fundamental ideas proposed, such as cultural and social organisations/diversity, generating novel ideas and the non-linear nature of innovation, were present in PayPal. However, the significance of ideas such as boundary objects and real-time co-ordination narratives was less clear; people are more rounded nowadays, which might weaken the importance of boundary objects in the future. Although I do mention that they still might be present but at a deeper level, that was not made clear to me in the narratives I researched. I felt that their third main point, sustaining innovation was not relevant to PayPal at that particular time as they have only experienced one major instance of innovation, and thus there was not enough information on which to base an analysis. I think the reason why the focal paper failed to resonate with my chosen technology was because the authors chose to approach the issue from an old firm standpoint, and even though the paper was written in 2009, I think this view of the firm is outdated. Firms with 100+ years of history are dying out and are being replaced by regenerative and disruptive firms, usually in the form of start-ups. Most of the literature I have referred to has been based on companies with long histories. The typical company type observed has had an abundance of past victories as well as failures, thus facilitating co-ordination. I think that, in order to improve, the literature needs to look at innovation in young companies and how narratives may come from individuals experiences outside that particular company. The literature could focus more on how innovation arises from entrepreneurship and expand by looking at narratives on a more personal level. I also think that in the time of shorter product life cycles and S-curves, the innovation literature needs to look at short-term innovation more directly. This is because, as shown with Facebook and Silicon Valley in particular, start-up culture is increasing, and these firms are very innovative. Many companies are created and die every day with very little history behind them. Therefore, I think the literature needs to look into innovation at this level. I think the development future of technologies can be improved by experimenting with cultures in conjunction with narratives. Successful companies like Google, Facebook, and Twitter employ people from a wide range of backgrounds but then try to unite them with a culture of their own. From my research, I believe narratives do have a role to play in the technology innovation process, but Bartel and Garud (2009) have not described the theory in relation to what I believe is the modern view of the firm. Bibliography Barr, A. (2012) PayPal enters dongle wars, taking on Square [online] Available at: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/03/15/paypal-mobile-idUSL2E8EEEZK20120315 (Accessed 2 May 2012) Bartel, C. A. and Garud, R. (2009) Organization Science, 20(1), pp.107-117 Bassett, C. (2007) The arc and the machine: Narrative and the new media, Manchester: Manchester University Press Baxter, L. (2012) Management of Technology. Introduction January 18. York: University of York

Y4795853 Bishop, J. (2012) PayPal Predicts the Future of Money [weblog post] PayPal Blog Available at: https://www.paypal.co.uk/blog/innovation/PayPal-Predicts-the-Future-ofMoney/). (Accessed 15 April 2012) Brunsson, N. and Sahlin-Andersson, K. (2000) Constructing Organizations: The Example of Public Sector Reform, Organizational Studies, 21(4), pp.721-746 Doolin, B. (2003) Narratives of Change: Discourse, Technology and Organization. Organization, 10(4), pp.751-770 Edgerton, D. (2004) The linear model did not exist: Reflections on history and historiography of science and research in industry in the twentieth century, The Science-Industry Nexus: History, Policy, Implication, pp.1-36 Eisenmann, T. and Barley, L. (2007) PayPal Merchant Services, Harvard Business

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Encyclopedia of World Biography (n. d.) Elon Musk Biography Available at: http://www.notablebiographies.com/news/Li-Ou/Musk-Elon.html#b (Accessed 30 April) FindLaw, Agreement and Plan of Merger X.com Corp. and Confinity Inc., (2000) Available at: http://contracts.corporate.findlaw.com/planning/merger/1461.html (Accessed 1 April 2012). Fletcher, D. (2006) Toy Story: The narrative world of entrepreneurship and the creation of interpretive communities, Journal of Business Venturing, 22, pp.649-672 Godin, B. (2009) The making of science, technology and innovation policy: Conceptual frameworks as narratives, 1945-2005, Available at: http://www.csiic.ca/PDF/TheMakingOfScience.pdf (Accessed 5 April 2012) Hildreth, P. M. and Kimble, C. (2004) Knowledge Networks: Innovation through Communities of Practice, London: Idea Group Publishing Jackson, E. M. (2004) The PayPal Wars: Battles with eBay, the media, the mafia, and the rest of planet earth. Los Angeles: World Ahead Publishing, Inc. Kang, P. (2005) PayPals Growing Pains [online] Available at: http://www.forbes.com/2005/04/14/cx_pk_0414paypal.html (Accessed 1 May 2012) Levchin, M. (n. d.) Personal Website [online] Available at: http://www.levchin.com/paypal-slideshow/4.html (Accessed 5 May 2012) Livingston, J. (2008) Founders at work: Stories of startups early day, New York: Springer-Verlag Milgrom, P. R. (1988) Employment Contracts, Influence Activities and Efficient Organization Design, Journal of Political Economy, 96(1), pp. 42-60 Nye, D. (1997) Narratives and Spaces. 1st edn. Exeter: University of Exeter OBrien, J. M. (2007) Meet the PayPal mafia: An inside look at the hyper intelligent, super connected pack of serial entrepreneurs who left the payment service and are turning Silicon Valley upside down. [online] Available at:

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