The linear model’ has become a term of art in studies of science policy and innovation, and
in some historical studies of science and technology.
ii It is, like ‘technological determinism’
and ‘Whig’ history of science and technology, an invention of academic commentators.iii Like
these, but unlike ‘scientific revolution’ or ‘big science,’ ‘linear model’ was not meant to be an
analytically useful concept: it is there to be condemned as simplistic and inaccurate. It is a foil
for the more elaborated academic account, in short, a classic straw man. But it is more than a
straw man: although it is of recent invention, some students of science and technology have
given the model historical agency. They have come to believe that it existed in the minds of
academic analysts and key policymakers of the past, and that it had a powerful influence on
policy and practice. Worse still, the idea of ‘the linear model’ often locks even critics into a
concern with ‘basic’ science, even in the study of ‘innovation’: proponents (such as they are)
and critics, share a model of science in which science is academic research. In this model
studies of academic research are privileged, as is innovation in such studies.
I will argue that using and criticizing the term ‘linear model’ avoids critical engagement with
the much richer models of innovation developed by academic specialists in innovation, as
well as many crucial historical actors. Accounts of innovation in the 20th century, and indeed
science in industry in the 20th century, more usefully start from a conceptual frame quite
different from either the ‘linear model’ or the usual criticisms of the model. In particular the
history and historiography of non-academic research is a key resource. For example, the
history of industrial research and of science in industry, and new accounts of military research
and development—both significantly often treated as part of the history of ‘technology’—
provides a rich alternative reading of the history of twentieth century science, including the
development of academic science, ‘big science,’ interdisciplinary research, and more
obviously the ‘industrialization of research,’ which historians of ‘science’ should pay
attention to.iv We need to be careful, however, because the academic research model has
affected even our understanding of science in industry and the military. Industrial and military
2
research and development was much more than central corporate or government research
laboratories. I argue that we should go further still, and note the systematic conflation
between ‘science’ and ‘research:’ most research is not academic, and most science is not
research. Finally, I will argue that the case of the ‘linear model’ allows us to reflect on the
general tendency to attack straw men in academic studies of science and technology, and on
the lack of cumulation in the historiography of science and technology.