Negotiating Meaning: An ANT Approach to the Building of Innovations

Using an ANT approach based on Programs of Action the authors explore the description of innovation cases to discover internal referents that conveys their meaning. This paper revisits some old and well known histories like the application of ecography to obstetrics and gynaecology and the making and evolution of the computer mouse. Finally, the authors change from these localized cases of innovation to other histories on a more global frame, that is, the cases of two firms, one in the semi conductor industry, and the other in the mould for plastics industry. These descriptions are used as a way to research on the building of an ANT view for engineering innovations and wonder at the ability in which Actor-Network Theory (ANT) adapts and conciliates micro and macro worlds.