Journal of Clinical Immunology and Allergy

Introduction

In recent years a growing number of social science studieshave pointed out the significance of expectations in science andtechnology innovation. This special issue of Technology Analysisand Strategic Management brings together authors whoseinterest has been concerned with exploring a range of questionsabout the role of expectations in shaping scientific andtechnological change. Its contributors reflect ongoingscholarship from within a range of perspectives includingsociology of technology and science, history, economics andinnovation studies. Given that such expectations have been asource of acute interest of late in areas as broad as thebiosciences, nanotechnology and energy, this special issue isboth timely and important in drawing these strands together,articulating some of the lessons learnt thus far, and definingfuture areas of investigation. By definition,innovation incontemporary science and technology is an intensely future-oriented business with an emphasis on the creation of newopportunities and capabilities. Novel technologies andfundamental changes in scientific principle do not substantivelypre-exist themselves, except and only in terms of the imaginings,expectations and visions that have shaped their potential. Assuch, future-oriented abstractions are among the mostimportant objects of enquiry for scholars and analysts ofinnovation. Such expectations can be seen to be fundamentally‘generative’, they guide activities, provide structure andlegitimation,attract interest and foster investment. They givedefinition to roles, clarify duties,offer some shared shape ofwhat to expect and how to prepare for opportunities and risks.Visions drive technical and scientificactivity,warranting theproduction of measurements, calculations, material tests, pilotprojects and models. As such, very little in innovation can workin isolation from a highly dynamic and variegated body of future-oriented understandings about the future.To conclude, a systematic comparison of the differences indynamics in various fields is an important next step in the studyof expectations. To what extent might we be able to identifyrecurrent patterns in the dynamics of expectations? Whatlessons might be learnt from a comparison of sector specificinsights? What contribution will retrospective case studies maketo such an analysis and to what extent are their insightscomparable? How do these studies fit within comment anddiscussion on the wider context of the political economy ofexpectations? While the papers brought together in this issue gosome way towards responding to these kinds of questions, muchremains to be done in furthering our understanding of thesedynamics and their place in the temporal and spatialorganization of innovation.Over the last couple of decades any number of techniques,instruments and practices has evolved to articulate and assessexpectations in science and technology (technology forecastingand assessment, backcasting, roadmapping, scenarios methods,foresight, etc.). Each in their different way have sought toprovide some form of anticipatory competence through which itmight become possible to make more strategically prudentdecisions about the future. The papers brought together in thisissue offer a slightly differentperspective by offeringobservations about the less strategic and formalized way inwhich futures and expectations are enacted and performed. Thisdistinction was once referred to as the difference betweenlooking into the future and looking at the future. Probably themost important next step for analysts of expectations is to bringthese two dimensions together in a more reflexiveattempt tounderstand the contribution of their findings for the futureunderway in the present. That is to integrate analysis andpractice by merging the perspectives of looking into and lookingat the future. It is just possible that the papers in this issue mayharbor some nascent suggestions on how that might beachieved