Abstract

"Between Cause and Consequence: A Microhistorical Study of the Innovation of Penicillin"

Andrew Hargadon, University of California, Davis (abhargadon@ucdavis.edu)

In studying the innovation process, predominant narrative arcs spanning from conception to outcome may obscure alternative explanations for how innovations are accomplished and why they have the impacts they do. This paper presents a microhistorical case study that re-analyzes the development of penicillin at Oxford from the Fall of 1939 and the Fall of 1941, millennia after its recorded use in folk remedies and decades after its first observations in modern science (Hargadon & Wadhwani, 2022). Using a microtemporal lens, this research focuses on the 24 months during which the Oxford group adopted Fleming’s abandoned research on the penicillium mold; developed methods for growing, harvesting, purifying and stabilizing the active compound penicillin; and demonstrated its effectiveness in animal and human trials before others brought the work to its final commercial production and use. I draw on archival evidence from journals, letters, laboratory notebooks, and submitted scientific manuscripts to develop a grounded study of innovation situating the intentions and actions of these individuals within this moment (Suddaby, 2006; Wadhwani & Bucheli, 2014; Kirsch, Moeen, and Wadhwani, 2014). Using a macrotemporal lens, this research also focused on the roughly 30 years spanning both the historical context shaping that moment and the consequences that followed. In moving between context, actions, and consequences, the findings reveal that while the Oxford team’s work accomplished neither penicillin’s initial conception nor its ultimate outcome, its actions structured the emergent field of antibiotics in ways that would establish in retrograde the consequentiality of both. These findings highlight opportunities for further research on innovation by demonstrating consequences matter as they signify particular outcomes over time and instill prior conceptions and actions with consequentiality.