Radical Innovation as a Multilevel Process: Introducing Floating Grain Elevators in the Port of Rotterdam

Hugo van Driel is assistant professor of business history in the Faculty of Business Administration at the Erasmus University, Rotterdam. He specializes in the history of seaports and recently contributed to several chapters in Comparative Port History of Rotterdam and Antwerp (1880-2000): Competition, Cargo and Costs, ed. Ferry de Goey (Amsterdam, 2004). Johan Schot is professor of the history of technology at Eindhoven University of Technology. He has written and edited numerous books and articles on the history of technology and on constructive technology assessment, including most recently the seven-volume Techniek in Nederland in de twintigste eeuw, published by Walberg Pers, 1998-2003, and "The Contested Rise of a Modernist Technology Politics," in Modernity and Technology, ed. Thomas J. Misa, Philip Brey, and Andrew Feenberg (2003). They thank Dick van Lente, Adrian Jarvis, Michael Mende, and the Technology and Culture referees, along with the participants in the ECIS conference in Eindhoven, September 2001, and the COST340 conference "Towards a European Intermodal Transport Network: Lessons from History," Milan, May 2004, for their comments on earlier versions. Finally, they are indebted to Karen Freeze for her careful reading of a draft text and many detailed suggestions for improvement. This is a heavily revised version of an earlier article, "Regime-transformatie in de Rotterdamse graanoverslag," NEHA-Jaarboek voor Economische, Bedrijfsen Techniekgeschiedenis 64 (2001): 286-318. The research was funded by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO).