Abstract
K6015, a South Korean firm seeking to commercialize its magnet technology in the US market, entered a technology commercialization training program structured as a competition. Through this program, K6015 (and others in the program) used several genres to progressively interest different sets of stakeholders. To understand how K6015 applied these genres, we analyze this case study in terms of interessement, a concept from actor-network theory, and standing sets of transformations, a related concept from workplace writing studies in which enacting a set of genres entails a controlled, progressive transformation of arguments. We examine the entire competition process, using K6015 and three other competitors to illustrate this process and to examine rhetorical transformations responding to different criteria. In enacting these standing sets of transformations, K6015 and other competitors transformed their innovations into commercialized technologies–and transformed themselves from innovators into entrepreneurs. Finally, we discuss implications for understanding entrepreneurship rhetorically.
Keywords
Their explanation of what is going on with flux flows is bizarre. . . . What they are observing may be real but the explanation is incorrect.
In 2013, a small South Korean firm, K6015, 1 wanted to commercialize its new technology for global markets. So K6015 entered the Gyeonggi Innovation Program (GIP): a technology commercialization program offered by the Global Commercialization Group (GCG) at the IC2 Institute, a think tank at the University of Texas at Austin. This competition involved a 9-month process in which firms learned to pitch innovations to potential stakeholders. The process included a technology assessment and commercialization report (a “Quicklook®”; Jakobs, Spinuzzi, Digmayer, & Pogue, 2015) in which a contractor investigated the technology’s potential and fit for a U.S. market. Through the competition, 12 to 15 of the 200+ applicants were selected to receive business development mentoring, which involved making specific market contacts and developing relationships that could lead to deals. Throughout this process, firms transformed their arguments in different written genres, addressing different stakeholders and criteria, to develop unique value propositions for their innovations.
K6015’s technology was a combination of permanent magnets and an electromagnet to hold and release ferromagnetic metals (iron, nickel, steel). Whereas standard electromagnets need continuous current flow to hold an object, K6015 explained in its technology description, this technology “only requires a momentary electromagnetic ‘pulse’ to engage and disengage the magnetic field of a permanent magnet.” This technology’s applications included factory automation, aerospace, and electromagnetic locking. It offered a strong value proposition to stakeholders—if it worked as described.
But did it? Experts were unconvinced. K6015 claimed that the technology was based on a “new rule of magnetic flux flow,” but one senior scientist said that it “sounds like an electro-permanent magnet,” while an R&D director said that the “bi-stable characteristics . . . is seen in a Switched Reluctance Motor. It is not a new law of Physics [sic].” The Quicklook concluded, “The innovator should engage a physicist in order to understand and explain the innovation using well understood and accepted physical concepts. Statements like ‘new rules of flux flow’ that contradict accepted physics open this technology to criticism.”
This was bad news for K6015. Its magnet technology could attract ferromagnetic metals, but it also had to attract market stakeholders: licensees, investors, partners, customers. And at this point, the argument implicit in its technology description was actually repelling these stakeholders!
This technology commercialization process provides an interesting challenge, not just for K6015, but also for writing studies. To successfully commercialize their technologies, firms such as K6015 must assemble emergent arguments by seeking market problems that their technologies can solve. Successfully developing these arguments requires producing and reading multiple genres that mediate their interactions with multiple stakeholders who have different interests and backgrounds. Yet they are initially familiar with neither stakeholders nor genres—partly because they are learning how to be entrepreneurs, partly because they must communicate with stakeholders from different cultures. Finally, the emerging argument is high stakes. In such a complex, contingent rhetorical activity, how do written genres mediate the firms’ work and help them to develop a coherent argument? How do firms interest stakeholders tactically while retaining the argument’s strategic coherence, producing an argument whose claims to different stakeholders are reconcilable?
Arguably, such a task exceeded K6015’s capabilities, yet K6015 learned to make such arguments. In this article, we follow K6015 and other firms as they construct these arguments through a defined process. We use two explanatory constructs, interessement and standing sets of transformations, to conceptualize this rhetorical activity as a series of moments; examine how genre assemblages guide firms through these moments as they tactically transform arguments to interest different stakeholders; and examine how the genre assemblage allows the firms to make the transformations cohere strategically, yielding arguments that interest the entire range of stakeholders. Finally, we discuss how this analysis can help us to better examine complex written arguments for multiple stakeholders.
Background
How do innovations spread? As Akrich, Callon, and Latour (2002a) argue, one explanation is diffusion. According to this model, good ideas spread by virtue of being self-evidently good: When (for instance) a farmer sees that a new fertilizer can improve yield, she adopts it. In this arhetorical understanding of diffusion, the innovation’s value proposition—its claim to value—is understood as a property of the innovation itself (Lusch & Vargo, 2014).
Yet, in practice, this arhetorical understanding of diffusion does not hold up. When people adopt innovations, they adapt them to local needs (Akrich, Callon, & Latour, 2002b; Rogers, 2003). If they cannot, the innovation does not go anywhere (Akrich, 1993).
Actor-network theorists describe this principle as translation: “a definition of roles, a distribution of roles and the delineation of a scenario” (Callon, 1986b, p. 26). Translation is not necessarily rhetorical in the sense of requiring claims and arguments; technologies are often drafted to do things that their producers never intended. But when an innovator wants to encourage potential stakeholders to deliberately adopt an innovation—for instance, if K6015 wants to interest stakeholders in licensing its magnet technology—the innovator must approach the problem rhetorically. Through dialogue, innovators and stakeholders can collaboratively develop a value proposition addressing stakeholder needs (Lusch & Vargo, 2014).
Shifting from diffusion to translation is often difficult for innovators, who tend to be experts in their technical domain but newcomers to commercializing technology. Thus, entrepreneurship development programs (Gibson & Conceiçao, 2003) teach innovators to produce arguments and written genres to interest appropriate stakeholders. Such genres include pitch decks, technology assessment and commercialization reports, company websites, product descriptions, patents, and certifications. Through these genres, innovators make coherent arguments addressing the questions of specific stakeholders: Will K6015’s magnet provide a value proposition justifying the expense of commercializing it beyond Korea? Can it deliver more than marginal improvements in price, quality, and speed? Can it yield a business model that delivers enhanced value? Does it have appropriate patent protection and a team that can successfully commercialize it? In using these written genres to answer these questions, the innovators learn to persuade stakeholders to translate the innovation.
Translation involves four moments:
Problematization: “Reshaping and stating a problem or activity in terms specific to a particular discourse”
Interessement: “Relating an actor’s interests with another set of interests”
Enrollment: “Coordination of actors with related interests”
Mobilization: “Consolidation of interests of the group through the representation of a spokesperson” (Swarts, 2011, p. 278; cf. Callon, 1986a).
Particularly interesting, but underexplored in writing studies, is the second moment, interessement, in which actors are mutually defined and locked into place.
Interessement
How are stakeholders found and defined? Like other firms, K6015 entered the GIP because it needed to find and convince U.S.-based stakeholders. K6015’s application listed many potential uses and markets for its innovation, but it could not open dialogues with all possible stakeholders about all possible uses in all possible markets! So K6015 had to define markets and stakeholders, then position their innovations to offer those stakeholders value (cf. Akrich et al., 2002a, pp. 203-204).
We use interessement as an explanatory construct for understanding arguments to multiple stakeholders. Interessement means to be in between (inter-esse) or interposed (Callon, 1986a); it involves relating multiple actors’ interests through the pathway of the innovation, making those interests interconnected and mutually dependent (Swarts, 2011, p. 278). Through those interdependent interests, interested parties are defined and locked into place (Callon, 1991). Since the process is open-ended, the innovation is in flux, and addressing one set of stakeholders can alienate others, innovators must construct arguments that keep the innovation interposed between stakeholders and their goals. Various trials or tests of the innovation let it attract actors, creating identifiable groups with specific goals (Akrich et al., 2002b, p. 213). If someone wanted to lower the energy costs of magnetic locks, design a more reconfigurable robot, or efficiently lift metal, K6015’s innovation could be their best path to achieving that goal. K6015 sought to reposition the innovation between such stakeholders and their goals.
Interessement differs from traditional, situated rhetorical analysis in at least two ways. First, it is additive: Successful interessement involves tracing a path that reconciles different stakeholder interests (Callon, 1986a). Second, it is transformative: The focus is not on directed persuasion to an existing view but on emergent cocreation, in which innovator and stakeholders mutually transform the innovation and the claims surrounding it (cf. Swarts, 2011, p. 278).
Yet, in an emergent argument, not all stakeholders can be interessed at once. K6015 would be hard-pressed to interest possible stakeholders before it identified markets to address; indeed, it has to interesse gatekeepers before it can even reach other stakeholders. But if interessement happens in stages, it can be opportunistic, losing the additive coherence that allows one argument to interesse multiple stakeholders: The tactical interessement of individual stakeholders can overwhelm the strategic interessement of all necessary stakeholders (e.g., Akrich, 1993; Callon, 1986a).
The GIP, like other entrepreneurship programs, trains innovators in written genres that enable both tactical and strategic interessement. These genres are produced in stages, arrayed in a standing set of transformations.
Standing Sets of Transformations
The GCG uses a five-phase process that leads K6015 and other firms through trials that interesse different actors. Each trial applies different criteria to better define the innovation, interest potential actors, and adapt its value proposition to their needs. These trials are managed through a standing set of transformations (SST) instantiated in written genres (Read & Swarts, 2015; Spinuzzi, 2010). Each genre reuses and rerepresents arguments from previous genres (Spinuzzi, Nelson, et al., 2015; Swarts, 2009), but reorients those arguments within the action to which the current genre is oriented, while adding arguments as appropriate for that moment.
SSTs emerge from studies of genre assemblages (e.g., Ding, 2008) and document cycling (e.g., Paradis, Dobrin, & Miller, 1985). Specifically, SSTs focus on transformations between genres. Examining GCG genres as an SST lets us examine how these defined transformation points guided firms in keeping their arguments coherent across stakeholders (Figure 1).
The Gyeonggi Innovation Program’s standing set of transformations. Boxes represent document genres. Arrows show how each genre informs the next.
In Figure 1, we see five distinct trials associated with genres that firms produce (top row) and read (middle row), and genres for judging their final pitches (bottom row) throughout the 9-month process. Arrows show how each genre informs the next (typically through textual reuse; see Spinuzzi, Nelson, et al., 2015). The bottom of the figure shows individuals being interessed during each phase: business developers, business analysts, representatives of the market, and judges of the pitch competition.
An SST’s results can be unpredictable and contingent (Spinuzzi, 2010), but the SST itself is relatively stable and predictable, and consequently, so is the process it mediates. Here, the SST governs moments of potential interessement that translate the innovation, preserving the argument’s coherence while progressively interessing different stakeholders. The resulting arguments are more complex and nuanced: For instance, the final pitch deck ideally incorporates qualifiers to claims and counters to anticipated rebuttals as well as evidence appealing to various stakeholders (cf. Spinuzzi et al., 2014; Spinuzzi, Pogue, et al., 2015). For just 12 of the 300 applicants, these arguments were transformed successfully enough for the firm to proceed to business development.
The firms come from different industries and sectors, respond to different business cycles, and face different market requirements. And, of course, their arguments are emergent. Yet, remarkably, the SST provides guidance to all of these firms across their wildly different rhetorical challenges. Below, we examine how.
Method
We collected primarily qualitative data for the GIP’s sixth year and analyzed a subset of these using an inductive coding scheme. Since our informants identified the final pitch presentation as embodying key arguments for stakeholders, we collected interviews, texts, and oral presentations that allowed us to understand each stakeholder’s criteria and examine how arguments changed during the program. Since we were interested in how firms transformed arguments in response to criteria, our analysis focused on criteria-related data: interviews, surveys, observations, judging sheets, and pitch decks. We then used the corresponding documents to confirm and illustrate those primary data. This approach is similar to other macro-level examinations of genre assemblages that primarily examine reported and observed uses of genre, then secondarily examine genre instances themselves (e.g., Ding, 2008; Teston, 2009). (Elsewhere, we have analyzed in detail the textual genres from the previous year of the program [see Spinuzzi et al., 2014; Spinuzzi, Nelson, et al., 2015].)
The first author’s institutional review board approved this research.
Below, we discuss the research site, data collection, data reduction, and data analysis.
Research Site
K6015 was one of over 200 applicants to the 2013 pitch competition; it was accepted into the competition along with 49 other small and medium enterprises (SMEs), including K6017, K6010, and K6008 (see Table 1).
Four of the 50 firms in the competition.
The pitch competition had two goals: (a) to transform innovators (who invent or develop new innovations) into entrepreneurs (who turn those innovations into commercialized products) and (b) to help those innovators move their innovations from a local market (Korea) to global ones (typically but not exclusively the U.S. market). That is, the firms had to (a) learn how to sell a technology rather than just describing it and (b) learn to sell to members of a different culture.
We want to avoid broadly characterizing the logics or understandings of entire cultures—an overly reductive way of understanding such differences (Bjerregaard & Jonasson, 2014). Yet some cultural differences exist and affect persuasion and entrepreneurship through institutions, expectations, and cultural norms (e.g., Du-Babcock & Tanaka, 2013). Below, we briefly characterize some differences between U.S. and Korean business environments, based on our interviews and published literature.
GIP personnel described entrepreneurs such as K6015 as operating in a domestic business environment quite different from the U.S. business environment. SMEs in South Korea, although formally independent, often functioned as subsidiaries of large family-owned Korean companies (chaebol) (cf. Kim, 2005; Steinberg, 1989). Consequently, Korean SMEs were not accustomed to thinking in terms of external markets, end users, or competitive pricing. Failure was strongly stigmatized in Korean culture, so the government tended to broadly subsidize SMEs, lessening the pressure to compete. Many innovations focused on import replacement (producing domestic versions of products available on the global market); these offered marginal improvements in price, quality, or speed rather than a disruptive, broadly recognized value proposition. Finally, according to two GIP personnel, Korean business tended to orient to shared, relatively homogenous cultural values, cemented via long-term business relationships; in contrast, U.S. business typically orients to market competition. (In their retrospective interviews, K2129, K5022, and K5039 agreed.)
Consequently, these entrepreneurs often developed arguments that fit within Korea’s cultural and economic context but not the U.S. market. Thus firms had to shift from descriptive arguments to proposal arguments (London, Pogue, & Spinuzzi, 2015) that compellingly expressed a value proposition for a specific audience, presented evidence for that value proposition, and described an effective team.
Data Collection
We collected a broad array of data, allowing us to understand the program’s purpose and design from the perspectives of GIP personnel and firms, identify stakeholders and criteria they used to evaluate the firms’ arguments at different phases, and examine genres that firms wrote and read.
Interviews and surveys of GIP Personnel (Table 2)
Author 1 circulated an internal survey to 12 GIP personnel, resulting in 6 responses. Authors 1, 3, 4, and 5 conducted semistructured retrospective interviews with the GIP’s director (Lyle) and five mentors (Alan, Andy, Arthur, Tamara, Tracy), focusing on pitch criteria, genres, and cultural differences. Author 1 conducted retrospective interviews with personnel involved in application deliberations (Barry, Byul, Lyle). Authors 2 and 3 conducted semistructured interviews with Lyle and Larry (the program director) during the final competition in Korea.
Observations and Score Sheets of GIP Final Deliberations (Table 3)
Authors 2 and 3 video-recorded judges’ final deliberations and collected score sheets.
Observations, Interviews, and Documents of Selected Year 6 Firms (Table 4)
Authors 2 and 3 video-recorded selected firms’ training pitches, training feedback, posttraining interviews, and final pitches. They also collected documents related to the firms: application, initial and final pitch decks, Deep Dive comments, and the Quicklook.
Interviews of Previous Years’ Firms
Authors 2 and 3 conducted retrospective interviews with previous years’ firms (Table 5).
Data Reduction
We examined four cases in detail (Table 1), representing a mix of finalists and semifinalists with different business models and sectors. We also reviewed other firms’ data for contrast. We reduced data further by coding data and investigating specific themes.
Data Analysis
After reducing the data, we transcribed all field notes and paraphrased and partially transcribed interviews and observations for GCG personnel and for selected firms (Tables 2-5).
Interviews and Surveys of GIP Personnel: Date (Time in Minutes).
Observations and Score Sheets of GIP Personnel.
Selected Entrepreneur Observations, Interviews, and Documents: Date (Time).
Retrospective Interviews by Previous Years’ Entrepreneurs.
Field Notes
We transcribed these as written, with paragraph breaks representing distinct actions or speaking turns within observations.
Interviews
We initially paraphrased all interviews, then transcribed key parts.
Observations
For application deliberations, we transcribed field notes. For training pitches, training feedback, final pitches, and judges’ deliberations, we closely paraphrased speech and described slides and actions, then transcribed key quotes.
Judges’ Score Sheets
We reproduced the format of the judges’ score sheets in a spreadsheet, transcribing handwritten judges’ comments into text.
Coding
We limited coding to three data sets: (a) initial interviews of GIP personnel, (b) observations of application deliberations, and (c) observations of training and final pitches. Coding was nonexclusive. Author 1 coded entries, initially using descriptive starter codes (Miles & Huberman, 1994, pp. 57-58), then performing open coding (Corbin & Strauss, 2008) to inductively identify recurrent themes. Since the data sets represented different parts of the process, they involved different codes, but we maintained coherence across codes when appropriate (appendix).
Once we identified themes in codes, we used other data sets to confirm and illustrate them, examining how innovators transformed their claims based partly on written feedback. (Elsewhere, we rigorously examined similar sets of documents [see Spinuzzi et al., 2014; Spinuzzi, Nelson, et al., 2015].)
The Trials of K6015
Earlier, we discussed how interessement emerges through “trials” (Akrich et al., 2002b). In STS studies of interessement and innovation, these trials are often depicted as unpredictable and emergent (Akrich et al., 2002a, 2002b; Callon, 1986a). But the GIP set up a specific process and taught regularized genres constituting an SST, one that made trials more predictable—in nature and schedule, if not in specifics (Figure 1). At least some of the stakeholders were already defined due to the regularized process. Different stakeholders required different sets of criteria to be interessed, and these criteria were activated at different points in the SST, constituting different trials. Furthermore, the SST allowed some firms to maintain argument coherence, culminating in a final pitch deck that could interesse the various stakeholders. Below, we discuss criteria operant during phases depicted in Figure 1, examining how these criteria interessed stakeholders.
Pretrials: The Tripod
April 18, 2013: The GIP director, Lyle, described the competition that K6015 would soon enter. These SMEs had each realized some success within Korea, and some had been successful in marketing innovations in other Pacific Rim countries. They now wanted to break into global markets, particularly the U.S. market. Yet, he emphasized, these firms often did not know how to do so. In Korea, most SMEs worked in the chaebol system or existed on government subsidies, competing on marginal improvements in cost, quality, and speed, relying on personal contacts, and describing their innovations rather than proposing uses for them. Such arguments would not be effective in the United States. Thus they had to learn and master U.S.-oriented arguments, performed in highly regulated and templated genres. These genres guided firms in developing claims and evidence that U.S. stakeholders would find relevant; by learning these genres, the firms ideally learned how to address the cultural logics of U.S. stakeholders. Their arguments culminated in two interrelated genres: an oral pitch presentation and an accompanying pitch deck.
When interviewed, alumni of the program testified that this mastery was difficult. K1009 said that “most participants were strangers to that kind of presentation.” K4042, K5022, and K5039 confirmed the differences between U.S. and Korean expectations for pitches and recounted learning presentation skills and eye contact appropriate for U.S. audiences.
But the entrepreneurs were not the only ones who had to interesse stakeholders. In our interviews, Lyle repeatedly drew a figure describing the “tripod” of stakeholders served by the GIP (Figure 2).
Lyle’s “tripod” of public, private, and academic stakeholders.
The three stakeholders represent public (government), private (business), and academic (higher education) sectors. As Lyle told us, the three sectors had different expectations. Figure 2 represents an uneasy alliance of stakeholders that the GIP had to lock in—an alliance that would set criteria for the first trial.
In terms of the public sector, the GIP was supported by the Gyeonggi Small & Medium Business Center (GSBC), which was established by the governor of Gyeonggi-Do Province. Thus the program ran on annual funding cycles: The GSBC expected to generate annual media events in which it could tout “concrete, demonstrable results” such as export revenue, which in turn created “new wealth, new jobs, new opportunities,” leading to additional tax revenue.
The private sector, however, followed variable cycles. For instance, automotive, health care, and food industries have long (3-5 year) sales cycles due to certification, design, and testing requirements. Other industries have much shorter cycles. The GIP provided external validation for the innovations; the private sector had a reason to believe the innovators.
The academic sector was different. As Lyle described it, higher education is more inwardly focused. As an arm of the university, GCG focused on “an education-capacity-building-driven model.” Academic stakeholders benefited from this engagement through royalties used to support research program and benefit inventors. The academic cycle was “the long game.”
“Keeping all of those constituencies happy is an art unto itself,” Lyle added. Ultimately the program was built around the public-sector cycle, and in Lyle’s judgment, this annual cycle led to “unnatural behavior.” For instance, the program had to prioritize firms that had already commercialized their products in Korea: Those firms had already learned how to package, deliver, and provide customer support for products, so the learning curve for global markets was shallow enough to fit into the annual cycle.
Interessement Before the Application Process
Even before the application process began, then, the tripod set the baseline criteria for the initial pool of applicants. Applicants had to define themselves in relationship to this environment: They had to demonstrate prior domestic success, avoid seeming difficult to work with, demonstrate a positive team attitude, and fit their innovations into the 12-month cycle. Those in long-cycle industries had to demonstrate that they had already cleared regulatory and intellectual property hurdles.
K6015 and its innovation both fit into the criteria of the different members of the tripod (as did K6008, K6010, and K6017). K6015’s innovation represented a potential path that would lead public, private, and academic stakeholders to their goals. Now K6015 and other innovators had to face the first trial.
Trial 1: The Application Phase
June 5, 2013: In GCG’s Austin offices, Lyle waited in a conference room for two business development specialists, Barry and Byul, to arrive and begin reviewing applications to the program. Over 200 applications lay crosshatched on the table in three piles; they could only accept 50.
The applications were five-page printed forms containing the entrepreneur’s name and contact information and the technical description, intellectual property status, and development status of the innovation. In filling these out, the firms provided the information that GCG needed—and demonstrated their English proficiency. Some applications also came with demonstrations. Lyle held one: a square of four rectangular magnets, bisected by a fifth, cylindrical bar magnet (Figure 3).
The magnet demo (from K6015’s pitch deck).
When Barry arrived, Lyle handed him the bisected square and told him to pull it apart, which Barry did with difficulty. Now, Lyle suggested, remove just this top piece. Barry did, and the rest of the magnets came apart much more easily. Lyle said that the innovation had a range of applications and good intellectual property (IP): six Korean patents and Patent Control Treaty (PCT) patents in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere.
Lyle repeated this performance the next day, when the three met with six business analysts to discuss applications. Lyle declared the magnet technology “my fave,” partly because the innovator was a proven scientist. Although the demo was composed of permanent magnets, the real innovation used an electromagnet as well, “an electromagnet that doesn’t need electrical current.” Uses, according to the application, included auto braking, elevators, emergency exits, and industrial lifting. At this point, the firm had only a 240kg working prototype. But it was a compelling demo and, Lyle said, a “real winner.” The room agreed.
What made this technology “a real winner”? The group rejected a grab bag of other innovations, including beanbag chairs, microfiber clothing, a process for reconditioning engine parts, a fingertip replacement for stethoscopes, and multifunctional pet gum for dogs. But the electromagnet technology had potential, Lyle explained later, because it met several criteria. These criteria implied positive answers to two crucial questions: Was the innovation a good bet—would it find a worthwhile market? And was the innovator a good bet—would the GIP want to work with this firm?
Was the Innovation a Good Bet?
First, the business developers assessed whether the innovation could interest their contacts in applicable markets. They assessed this potential through criteria such as multiple uses, potential margin and volume, and IP protection.
Multiple uses
Multiple uses meant “multiple shots on goal” for a technology: If innovators “miss” in a pitch with one industry, they can try again in another one. Figure 4, from K6015’s application, suggests that they could have multiple shots on goal (Item 10). In all, deliberations included 26 instances of discussion about use.
Excerpts from the technical description of K6015’s application.
Sometimes these envisioned uses exceeded the vision of the SME. For instance, business developers and analysts agreed that K6017’s food waste processor (which was pitched to restaurants) would probably not find a market in the United States because that market environment lacked the regulatory pressure that had created the market for this innovation in Korea. But Allen suggested that the city of Austin, which had just started a program for composting food scraps, might be receptive to the innovation at a larger scale. Deliberations included 79 such instances.
Like Allen, others at GCG relied on contacts to help them assess applications. Business developers and analysts understood business, but to recognize a true innovation, they had to reach out to specialists. For instance, Byul called contacts in the auto industry to evaluate some applications. Deliberations included 83 instances in which developers and analysts proposed reaching out to their business contacts.
Potential volume and margin
In addition, K6015’s innovation showed promise in its potential volume and margin. In terms of volume, even a successful technology might not sell in large enough batches to be worthwhile. K6015, however, seemed to have a high potential volume since it had so many potential uses. In terms of margin, especially for consumer technologies, the profit margin was often not high enough to justify the expense, particularly when factoring in hidden costs such as shelving, returns, and customer support (Barry called this “pay to play”). Again, K6015’s innovation was a license rather than a consumer-facing product, and it had enough potential uses that the GCG believed it could garner a reasonable margin. Marketability was mentioned 132 times; margin was mentioned only twice, both times to cast doubt on an otherwise plausible application.
Intellectual property
Still another advantage was that the technology had sufficient IP protection: K6015 owned patents and had already filed PCT applications, including in the United States, and had applied for patents in several additional countries. Each patent meant more potential value. IP was mentioned 32 times in deliberations.
Was the Innovator a Good Bet?
Beyond the innovation, the business developers examined whether the innovators themselves were worth pursuing: Could their team execute well and work independently? Would they represent the program well, enhancing its reputation?
Team
Lyle was confident K6015’s team could work well with GCG. “We need to have hard, dedicated commitment from the innovator’s side to make something happen,” Lyle told us, as well as “the bench strength to take on global commercialization issues.” If innovators seemed inflexible or intractable during information sessions, the program would not seriously consider their applications, even if the innovation seemed viable otherwise. Few innovations were so revolutionary that they were worth working with an intractable team. On the other hand, otherwise marginal innovations could be considered with a good team. Deliberators explicitly mentioned teams six times.
Beyond commitment, GIP personnel looked for firms that had both experience and capital; the theme was mentioned five times during deliberations. K6015 was headed by a research scientist with several patents (listed in the application), and it was well capitalized, so it could absorb unexpected costs.
Program reputation
Even if the innovation seemed solid and the innovators seemed able to execute, innovations still had to fit the reputation that the program wanted to build. Three innovations that could otherwise succeed were disregarded because they looked like “late night TV” products, and five more were described as “Rube Goldbergian.” “Do we really want to sell dog gum in this program?” Lyle asked rhetorically at one point in the deliberations.
Interessement During the Application Process
During this second trial, K6015 had to interesse the GIP by demonstrating that (a) the innovation had characteristics that would work for this program and (b) the innovators themselves had characteristics that would enhance the program. But they also attended to the question of whether the innovation could bring value to the tripod of stakeholders. Each application had to, first and foremost, interesse the public, private, and higher education components of the tripod. In this case, the application and demo were enough for K6015 to move to the next phase, along with K6008, K6010, K6017, and 46 others.
So K6015’s magnet had passed its first trial. However, as Lyle later acknowledged, the magnet’s principle was difficult to explain. K6015’s application had made the extraordinary claim that the “flow rule of magnetic flux” was a “world-first discovery” (Figure 4, Item 1). Such claims caused it trouble later on in the process.
Trial 2: The Deep Dive
July 9, 2013: Anthony, a GIP business analyst, observed K6015’s initial pitch presentation. The slide deck’s 10 sections (technology description, development status, benefits, IP status, business model, markets, market interest, competition, risks and barriers, and team status) came from the required GIP template and addressed GCG’s standard concerns about innovations and innovators. Each section could include multiple slides; K6015’s 33-slide pitch deck was longer than most. This pitch deck was accompanied by a live presentation so that Anthony could evaluate K6015’s English and oral presentation skills. The presentation was held at K6015’s facilities so Anthony could assess the firm’s operations.
After observing this initial pitch, Anthony filled out a “Deep Dive checklist” in which he noted that K6015 already had both experience and domestic success with the proposed business model (licensing), and at the same time had the flexibility to make further licensing deals in global markets. Furthermore, K6015 had successfully been able to organize its presentation to make this complex argument.
Based on these initial pitches and other indicators, GCG would choose K6015 and 24 other firms to receive Quicklooks, written by outside contractors who would investigate whether the innovation could find interest in the target market.
The initial application had represented a sketch of their argument consisting of a few claims about the innovation and its value. But this initial argument had to become more complex to circulate more broadly, incorporating claims about the innovators’ team, IP protection, and business model. So the Deep Dive presentation represented a fuller draft of the argument, rearticulating the original claims, adding other claims, and incorporating evidence. By including the standard sections in the template, K6015 made this more complex argument about its innovation and about itself (Spinuzzi et al., 2014; Spinuzzi, Nelson, et al., 2015).
Looking back, K6015 later characterized the initial deck as disorganized. Yet, unlike many of the other initial decks, K6015’s deck pointed to the problems that this technology could solve for market stakeholders. Rather than making a description argument, it made a proposal argument (cf. London et al., 2015).
In this trial, K6015 and other firms developed their arguments further, especially in terms of projecting how a market might take up the innovation and why it might not.
Projecting How a Market Might Take Up the Innovation
Firms had to demonstrate market interest by describing its benefits to the new market and the commercial history in its market of origin.
Benefits
Although demonstrating multiple uses was useful during the application stage, by the Deep Dive, firms should have (a) identified a set of markets the innovation could help and (b) identified market pain (points at which market stakeholders recognize inefficiencies) that the innovation could address as well as differentiated benefits compared to the competition. For instance, K6015 identified one specific problem with using electromagnetic locks in buildings: Since electromagnets require current to work, buildings with electromagnetic locks used power continuously. In contrast, a lock system based on K6015’s innovation would only use current when locking and unlocking, yielding operations savings.
Innovation commercial history
Firms could strengthen their position by demonstrating uptake in the local market and abroad. A good domestic track record indicated that the firm had developed the innovation well enough to market it and provide customer support. (But, as we will see, the GIP did not want too much uptake abroad.)
Anticipating Why a Market Might Not Take Up the Innovation
Firms also had to anticipate ways in which a market might not take up the innovation. In this stage, the discussion tended to center around IP status and risks and barriers.
IP status
Whereas the previous trials had checked on IP, by the Deep Dive, firms were expected to detail their current patents and the status of patents for which they had applied. K6015 was in good shape here: It had six Korean patents, had just applied for a seventh, and had patents pending in the United States and several other countries.
Risks and barriers
The Risks and Barriers section listed limitations that might keep the innovation from being taken up in the target market. Some firms did not develop this slide much: K6017, for instance, simply listed its risks as “?” and its barriers as “!” In contrast, K6015 listed the following limitations in its Deep Dive slide deck:
“[K6015] has no branch in USA”
“‘New’ Original technology”
“Need implementation for each industry”
“Need technology transfer”
Some of K6015’s risks and barriers boiled down to whether the innovation offered enough potential for the market to help commercialize it. For instance, take the bullet point on implementation. As Anthony commented on K6015’s Deep Dive presentation, “market issues will likely be dealt with by licensee.” That is, K6015’s model—licensing—meant that K6015 only had to license out its process; licensees would develop implementations.
On the other hand, other risks and barriers addressed whether the market could be confident in the innovation. For instance, K6015 persisted in describing its innovation as a “New ‘Rule of Magnetic Flux Flow’” and “the first discovery in the world” (Figure 5). Would the market believe this description, and if so, would it be willing to take a risk on something so new?
Part of the technology description slide from K6015’s Deep Dive presentation.
Interessement: The Deep Dive
In the previous trial, firms used applications to interesse business developers. But in this trial, they had to interesse business analysts. As Barry explained it, an analyst assesses whether the technology can find a market; the business developer helps the firm enter into and develop relationships within that market.
Analysts are skeptical (Lyle); to interesse them, firms had to demonstrate that they have thoroughly examined the market, established a fit, and identified risks and barriers. Did they identify a true problem—one that creates enough pain that the market wants to solve it? Do they offer a true solution to the market pain, one that will not create further anticipable problems?
The answers, for K6015, were provisionally affirmative. K6015’s magnet had managed to attract business analysts and developers in the GIP. But the next trial involved reaching beyond the GIP to representatives of the target markets.
Trial 3: The Quicklook
August 23, 2013: K6015’s Quicklook had just been finalized by a GIP contractor. That is, K6015’s argument had finally made its way beyond the GIP, circulating to potential licensees and others operating in the target market. Unfortunately, these stakeholders’ feedback was problematic; the business analyst had to send K6015 inquiries while the Quicklook was in process. These inquiries were sent via email on July 15, the same day the Quicklook author interviewed a physics professor who expressed skepticism about K6015’s technical description.
Quicklooks were generally authored on a contract basis by people outside the GCG who had been trained in this genre. Using a specified format, contractors interviewed representatives of the market based on the innovation, target market, and business model. For instance, K6017’s food waste processor could be purchased by restaurants and school districts, so the contractor approached restaurant supply stores, composting services, and waste management programs at schools and universities. K6010’s bracelet could be used by the deaf community, so that contractor approached a deaf teen and others who belonged to, or manufactured devices for, that community. And since K6015’s innovation was a principle it sought to license, the contractor approached experts who could assess the principles and representatives of companies that could conceivably license it. Finally, the contractor would summarize and analyze the Quicklook’s feedback, submit a draft, and revise it based on the program director’s suggestions (Jakobs et al., 2015). Each Quicklook represented 40 hours of work.
As we’ve seen, K6015’s Quicklook showed that representatives of the market were unconvinced. One even remarked that “they are saying that their device operates outside of the boundaries of physics.”
In response to the Quicklook author’s query, K6015 sent a seven-page email backed by two sets of test data and a letter from the vice-chairman of a Korean technology association vouching for the technology. (Quicklooks often connected to other genres in this way; see Figure 1.) Despite this additional evidence, the Quicklook’s Executive Summary stated that the investigated markets were unreceptive. Yet it recommended “a cautionary moving forward”: four interviewees had expressed some interest and suggested markets to which the innovation could be applied. Those markets were different from the ones the firm itself had originally suggested: Either (a) the originally identified markets were highly competitive, (b) the technology didn’t provide enough cost savings (e.g., door locks), or (c) the technology wasn’t applicable (e.g., interviewees claimed that aerospace doesn’t use ferrous material). The contractor recommended “this issue be explored and clarifications be made in product descriptions that do not elicit a skeptical response” (Figure 6).
Excerpt from executive summary of K6015’s Quicklook.
K6015’s innovation was seriously threatened. K6015 had built its value proposition on uniqueness and a broad array of uses, but both lines of argument were contradicted by the Quicklook. Still, the Quicklook recommended potential markets such as the “sorting and lifting of processed steel”—markets that were more prosaic than the transformer robots and aerospace coupling that made their way into every version of K6015’s materials.
Two of the other firms also received tough feedback. K6008’s Quicklook said that its market was too crowded to proceed. K6017’s Quicklook said that its food waste processor did not address market pain, so it should not proceed either. On the other hand, K6010’s haptic feedback device “has potential in other markets like Music and Gaming but the Deaf Market had the greatest pain.” Thus, the Quicklook recommended an unambiguous “Go.”
Interessement: The Quicklook
In this trial, K6015 had to interesse representatives of the target market. But the interessement was in danger because these representatives were dubious of K6015’s argument. Their statements cast doubt on K6015’s ethos and grasp of the principle; they suggested that applications were narrower than K6015 had assumed; and they identified competitors of which K6015 had been unaware. K6015 clearly struggled with using English to describe the mechanism and value of its invention, but also struggled to escape a technical, descriptive approach that left readers confused about the innovation. With K6015’s arguments for authority, uniqueness, and competition challenged, the situation seemed dire.
K6015 didn’t know that yet. At this point, although K6015 had received the email inquiry, it had not seen the Quicklook, and would not see it until the end of pitch training.
Trial 4: Pitch Training
September 13, 2013: K6015 practiced its pitch presentation before the final competition. The presentation trainer, Tamara, listened intently as the K6015 speaker began with a slide titled “A Question for You.” Smiling, he asked, “Do you know how many electromagnetic locking devices are installed in this building?” Tamara did not. He claimed there were “several dozens” and emphasized the high electricity consumption of these locking devices, contrasting it with the negligible consumption of K6015’s own device. Then he showed the next slide, “New Rule of Magnetic Flux Flow,” and discussed this new rule (Figure 7). Obviously K6015 had not yet seen the Quicklook, in which experts had expressed skepticism about this “new rule” and explicitly claimed that existing electromagnetic locks did not consume enough electricity to justify the expense of switching.
K6015’s technical description from the training presentation.
After K6015 finished its presentation, Tamara discussed it with the presenters. “You don’t have the final Quicklook yet,” she told them. “You’ll receive it tomorrow or Monday. You must respond to it.” She informed K6015 that their technology had “no competition. But people don’t believe that.” In the Risks and Barriers section, she counseled them to show that the potential market was huge—“unlimited!” She also told them that the Quicklook had identified “possible IP infringement,” so they had to “be ready” for questions along those lines.
In an earlier interview, Tamara said this process was typical. Firms usually did not receive the Quicklook until just after pitch training. She, however, received them beforehand, and she read each Quicklook the night before training the firm, focusing on risks and barriers so she could prepare them to rebut the points. This preparation was critical: Although some firms did not want to draw attention to the risks and barriers (Spinuzzi et al., 2014), the judges had also read the Quicklooks and expected to hear rebuttals.
Tamara provided detailed feedback to the other firms as well, generally focusing on engagement strategies (demonstrations, stories, leading questions); the presentations’ structure (the order and completeness of the sections covered by the slides, based on the pitch deck template); and, most critically, the claims and evidence that pitchers used (see Spinuzzi, Pogue, et al., 2015, for detailed analysis).
This third area—claims and evidence—was where Tamara concentrated much of her advice for K6015, K6008, K6010, and K6017. Because Quicklooks probed the weaknesses of applying an innovation to a specific market, they advanced counterclaims for the presenter to rebut in the final pitch.
For instance, for all four firms, Tamara showed how the Quicklook identified additional risks and barriers. She advised each presenter to address the risk or barrier with claims and evidence about “education,” a broad term she applied for various purposes: establishing a unique value proposition, developing a market for the product, and creating value awareness.
Another example was post-sales support. For K6008 and K6017, the Quicklook asked whether the firm could actually support the product in the United States (i.e., accept returns, repair defective products, answer questions about the product, and document use). Tamara suggested using the term “post-sales support” and developing a plan to offer it.
Another tactic was to use qualifiers to limit claims about the innovations (see Spinuzzi et al., 2014). For instance, K6015’s program application had claimed that this principle was “The First Discovery in the World,” and, the technical description claimed that the “flow rule of magnetic flux” was a “world-first discovery.” Since market representatives found these claims implausible, Tamara advised K6015 to qualify and limit them.
Finally, Tamara advised K6015, K6010, and K6008 to add third-party evidence to support claims (K6015) and comparison matrixes to compare their innovations with competing products on the market (K6010, K6008).
With this detailed feedback, based on the Quicklook, the trainer gave K6015 and the others a chance to rearticulate their pitches. This rebuttal work was crucial if K6015 was to recover: K6015 had to “reverse polarity” and reattract the potential stakeholders.
Interessement: The Presentation Training
Once it received the training feedback and the Quicklook, K6015 now knew that its attention-grabbing opening question about locks would be ineffective. K6015 had not demonstrated market pain in the emphasized target markets (locks and aerospace coupling), nor had it convincingly described its technology to magnetism experts. Thus, K6015 had to narrow and qualify claims, provide new evidence for their validity, and narrow the list of uses so the pitch audience could properly assess them.
Could K6015 interesse the representatives of the market, or at least convince the judges that they could interpose themselves between representatives and their goals? If so, K6015 had to act quickly: The final trial—the pitch—was less than two weeks away.
Trial 5: The Competition Phase
September 26, 2013: K6015 had just begun its pitch to the judges, who included Abe, Barry, Larry, and two Korean judges who had themselves been participants in previous years of the competition. K6015’s final presentation was significantly different from its practice presentation. Rather than speaking about door locks, the presenter immediately addressed the technical description. In “common sense,” he acknowledged, a permanent magnet should allocate its energy to another magnetic substance that has been placed on it later. But, he argued, the actual result is different. As he discussed this disjuncture, K6015’s CEO stood next to him and silently gave evidence to his claims by demonstrating with actual magnets. In the slide deck, the phrase “new rule of magnetic flux flow” had been replaced by “preferentially forming magnetic flux flow” and “control of magnetic flux flow” (Figure 8). A later slide bore a testimonial from a patent evaluator who had been skeptical until (like Lyle) he saw the effect with his own eyes. Finally, the judges got to see the effect once again with their own eyes, as the CEO demonstrated how the device clamps without power.
K6015’s technical description from the final pitch deck.
Not only did demonstrations take a larger role, K6015’s pitch deck had been restructured: The Technical Description had been expanded from 5 to 14 slides in order to make the case for the principle, while the claims on the slides had been qualified and new evidence had been included. Furthermore, K6015 explicitly quoted and rebutted objections from the Quicklook. The wide range of uses was still represented in the slides, including transformer robots and aerospace docking, but K6015 waited until the Q&A to discuss them. K6015 had shifted its argument significantly, drawing on other genres to help make its case (Figure 1).
K6015’s strategy was successful. In the question-and-answer session, judges asked questions that resembled the Quicklook’s criticisms. Abe asked about the costs of replacing locks, and Barry estimated that 60 replacements would cost an infeasible $300,000. Larry asked how they felt about the feedback in the Quicklook and whether they believed licensing was the best move. Abe pointed out that K6015 had mentioned several potential uses and asked them: If we select you for business development, which use will you develop first? The presenter replied: automation; locks and holds; “transformer” parts for robots; and aerospace, an industry they still chose to target despite the Quicklook’s findings. Finally, Larry asked about IP; the presenter assured him that “there should be no patent infringement.” “You understand why we must ask,” Larry replied, and the session came to a close.
Like K6015, K6017 and K6010 also updated their pitch decks, rearticulating their claims to address Quicklook criticisms raised in the training session (Table 6).
Claim Changes in Individual Slides.
For each presentation, each judge used a seven-page score sheet to assess the technology description, development status, IP, markets, business model, competition, risks and barriers, team, and potential impact, then make a final recommendation. Each sheet also asked for an overall numerical ranking (1-4). For K6015, the judges’ scores were split: Two judges ranked it highly (1), while the other two ranked it lower (3). Their comments on the score sheets reflected concerns about the technology and market, but judges ultimately agreed with the Quicklook that the program should cautiously move forward with this innovation. Given the judges’ questions and score sheet comments, K6015 made the right choice by cutting its original opener, which focused on electromagnetic locks. K6015 did not do as well as K6010, but much better than K6008 and K6017 (Table 7).
Judges’ Q&A and Score Sheets.
After viewing all pitches, the judges discussed them, ranked them, and settled on 12-15 finalists to accept for business development. A spreadsheet showing individual and aggregate scores was projected on a large screen. “Absolute nos” were displayed in red, including K6008 and K6017. Judges discussed various criteria, usually drawn from the early trials, perhaps because criteria from later phases were already addressed in the score sheets.
Trial 1: Teams
With nine months of close experience with the firm teams, the judges revisited this criterion from the application deliberations. One firm was deemed “pretty decent to work with”; still another elicited the reaction “do not bring that guy in!” Al remarked that one presenter looked good in front of a U.S. audience.
Trial 1: Program reputation
The judges also reconsidered how the firms might represent the GIP. One innovation was described as “cheesy as hell.” Another firm already had a U.S. presence, a situation that Abe described as “a big ball of crap.” Larry added that the GIP historically had not gotten credit in this situation: “Come June, they’re gonna say, ‘You guys haven’t done shit for us.’”
Trial 2: Would the market take up the innovation?
Months later, this criterion from the Deep Dive was revisited. For instance, judges agreed that K6017’s food waste processor was still intriguing, but “there’s no way” it could find a U.S. market. Barry supported another innovation because a Quicklook interviewee, an influencer in the market, had said he would “buy it today.”
Here at the end of the competition, the judges drew together criteria from earlier points of the SST. To keep judges interessed, firms had to demonstrate a strategically coherent argument that met criteria of stakeholders across all phases.
Finally, the judges colored the top rows green, confirming the finalists. Included were K6015 and K6010, which had not been considered controversial enough to discuss. And that was it: The magnet had, at long last, managed to attract its stakeholders—at least enough to go on to business development.
Here at the end of the process, it’s worth comparing how specific claims changed across the moments of interessement. Table 8 documents how K6015, K6010, and K6017 each rearticulated one of their claims across selected texts. (We omit K6008 because it did not significantly alter its final pitch deck.) K6015’s claim in the final pitch deck was a version of the other three articulations, but K6015 modified it to respond to the concerns described in the Quicklook: It eliminated subclaims the readers found implausible while retaining the core claim. K6010’s initial claim was less problematic and its Quicklook less critical, but it also progressively rearticulated its claim across its texts. Finally, we have highlighted K6017’s claims about its market, risks, and barriers because those proved to be key objections in the Quicklook.
Selected Claims About K6015’s, K6010’s, and K6017’s Technologies, Rearticulated Across Four Texts Plus the Quicklook Feedback; Typos Are in the Original Documents.
Interessement: The Final Presentation
After the Quicklook, K6015 had to rebut some arguments while qualifying, limiting, and trimming others (see Spinuzzi et al., 2014). The judges thought that K6015 did this rhetorical work imperfectly, but well enough to pass the trial. K6015 had persuaded the judges that it could address market concerns, present well, avoid most pitfalls, and give credit to the GIP. That is, K6015 had successfully put itself in a position to help the GIP and the licensees to reach their respective goals. The GIP was persuaded in turn to help K6015 further in order to meet its goals; market representatives who had expressed weak interessement could be approached with more persuasive arguments. Like a weak magnetic field, K6015 wasn’t tremendously attractive, but it was attractive enough.
As an afterword, as we were writing this article, we received word that K6015 had managed a final bit of interessement that came as a surprise to us, but not K6015. Despite what the representative had said in the Quicklook, K6015 successfully found a high-profile application in aerospace: It signed a testing agreement with NASA.
Implications
As K6015 and the others tried to interesse stakeholders, they were themselves interessed. Interessement isn’t directional, nor is it entirely agential; rather, actors mutually lock into place to pursue goals. Their work had to serve the mutual, often barely overlapping, objectives of GCG, GSBC, external stakeholders, and the firms themselves. The program did not just translate innovations into commercialized technologies; it also translated innovators into entrepreneurs and it translated their value propositions from descriptive claims to proposal claims.
Earlier, we described the SST through which the firms worked, an SST in which rerepresenting their arguments across differently oriented genres allowed firms to execute different moments of interessement. These genres guided the firms as they attempted to lock actors into related, mutually interposed roles; they punctualized the moments of interessement, applying different criteria at each moment to yield simplified, stabilized rhetorical situations. These punctualizations were not oriented in the same direction (e.g., the GIP’s interests were not necessarily aligned to those of specific markets represented in the Quicklook), so some innovations found success in different moments of interessement, but the majority failed to produce an interessement that held across moments. Still, these firms learned to translate rather than diffuse their technologies. Through the SST, finalists successfully maintained rhetorical coherence across punctualizations.
This SST was flexible enough to additively develop claims aimed at multiple industries with different markets, sales cycles, audiences, and needs; different innovations (including products, processes, and principles); and different business models. It selected innovations and innovators that could fit into a specific cycle, enhance the GIP’s reputation, and bring value to markets. And it developed those innovations and innovators to better meet those needs: Training the innovators in the different logics they needed to address and leading them to develop and reposition their innovations to better reach stakeholders.
This action is remarkable. Entrepreneurship involves understanding another field’s unique problems and developing unique solutions to address them. With these uniquenesses piled on uniquenesses, each entrepreneur’s journey can be wildly different. But an entirely unique program for each entrepreneur would be impractical. Instead, the SST established a structured process for identifying and translating a subset of innovators, innovations, and value propositions; for this subset, it standardized the journey while supporting the unique outcomes of each. The SST was a defined, primarily written, sociomaterial assemblage that received diverse inputs and produced compatible written arguments that could yield complex interessement.
Entrepreneurship needs such written genre assemblages because it requires people to develop complex emergent arguments for multiple stakeholders. But entrepreneurship is hardly the only activity with such requirements. We believe that examining other SSTs in this manner could provide similar insights into how written genre assemblages laminate the assumptions and goals of sets of stakeholders, especially in emergent networks of activity.
Indeed, we believe that this study has implications for macro-level studies of written genre assemblages in interdisciplinary activity networks. Specifically, the explanatory construct of interessement can help identify tactical rearticulations of claims that are crafted to persuade sets of stakeholders, while the SST construct can help identify how rhetors keep these rearticulations strategically coherent across sets of stakeholders. Such arguments are difficult enough for skilled rhetors, but for neophytes to both the activity (entrepreneurship) and the culture (the U.S. market), they may seem almost impossible. Yet by progressively developing texts in the genres of the SST, firms could develop such arguments, some well enough to progress to business development. Since boundary-spanning written communication has received much attention lately (e.g., Propen & Schuster, 2010; Schryer, Afros, Mian, Spafford, & Lingard, 2009) and has arguably become more prevalent due to new writing technologies that facilitate boundary-spanning collaborations (e.g., Pigg et al., 2014), we believe these constructs could be useful for understanding how persuasion works in such networks of activity.
Footnotes
Appendix
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.