Growing Networks: Detours, Stunts and Spillovers

This paper describes the open-ended, exploratory and evolutionary development of a communication infrastructure, through an empirical case study of the introduction and utilisation of telemedicine technology in a hospital department. Developing and using a communication infrastructure necessarily require partners, and in order to enrol the partners and build a network, detours were necessary. In the case the detours mainly consisted of staging individual transmission events (“stunts”) in cooperation with prospective partners. These stunts provided a concrete opportunity for cooperation, and although the stunts were singular and specific, knowledge and experience from these events also had general value (spillover). Thus, far from being just a secondary and non-productive activity, the stunts provided the core learning situations in the exploratory development project.