Dr Andrew McMeekin

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Research Interests

Socio-economic transformation in Genomics, Biotechnology and Bioinformatics
The Creation and Institutionalisation of Markets for Market Research
Distributed Innovation Processes and the Uneven Growth of Medical Knowledge
The Interfaces and Spaces between Innovation, Demand and Consumption

Socio-economic transformation in Genomics, Biotechnology and Bioinformatics

Transformation of the Agrofood Sector through Innovations in Genomics, Biotechnology and Bioinformatics

A CRIC core-funded project, with Mark Harvey, that has three interrelated strands:

Distributed Processes of Genomic Innovation: the case of rice genomics
Formation of Consumer Markets: the case of nutritionally enhanced rice
Competition and Intellectual Property Strategies: the case of crop protection

More details about this project will be provided shortly.

Details of a discrete, but related project, Bioinformatics and Economies of Knowledge is available here.

Scenario for Success for UK Biotechnology in 2005

Project commissioned by John Taylor, Director General of the Research Councils, to identify the possible 'shape of success' for the UK in Biotech in the year 2005. The final report, including the 'UK Biotechnology Success Scenario' is available here.

McMeekin, A. and Reed, A. (2000) 'Success in Biotechnology in the UK in 2005: a Background Report', report prepared for Director General of Research Councils, UK DTI.

Special journal issue based on DGRC for New Genetics and Society.

Genomics Scenario Workshop (with Mark Harvey and Ian Miles)

The ESRC commissioned a team led by the Institute for Alternative Futures (IAF) and CRIC to use the futures methodologies of forecasting and scenarios to explore the future of genomics and society. The aim was to provide a view of emerging issues in genomics and biotechnology, and to help identify areas where social science research related to genomics could make its greatest contribution.

Click for further details about the project are available here.

Bioinformatics and Economies of Knowledge

With Mark Harvey and Sally Gee

This is a one year ESRC funded research project looking at the development of bioinformatic capabilities across a range of significant comparators: US / Europe; orientation to agrofood / health; public / private / 'hybrid' institutional arrangement. The project builds on a project commissioned by the DTI Biotechnology Directorate.

More details of this project are available here, or for a hard copy of the final report, UK Bioinformatics: Current Landscapes and Future Horizons.

Harvey, M. and McMeekin, A. (2001) "", Report prepared for the DTI Biotechnology Directorate

Andrew McMeekin & Mark Harvey The formation of bioinformatic knowledge markets: An 'economies of knowledge' approach, CRIC Discussion Paper No 52.

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The Creation and Institutionalisation of Markets for Market Research

Research project with Alan Warde and Sally Randles looking at the historical development, evolving structures and current practices, underpinning dynamic processes of market institutionalisation in the market research industry. To achieve this, three specific elements of the development of market research are considered:

The changing markets for market research
The changing techniques of market research
The professionalisation of market research

Our motivations for studying the history of market research in the UK are directed towards the development of a socio-economic understanding of market creation. The development of market research activities can instruct this conceptual goal through a consideration of markets for market knowledge itself, and by considering the position of market research as a mediating economic activity within the markets (and the other modes of exchange, most notably in provision of public services) that it operates in.

Distributed Innovation Processes and the Uneven Growth of Medical Knowledge

Research with Stan Metcalfe, Andrew James and Ronnie Ramlogan funded under the ESRC Innovative Health Technologies Programme.

This study proposes to address the nature of the apparently uneven growth of innovation and practice in medicine by comparing and contrasting developments in two medical sectors and across two medical systems. Our working conjecture is that the uneven growth of innovation and practice can be traced to four principal issues:

Epistemic: The uneven growth of basic medical and scientific knowledge.
Organisational: The disparate ways in which innovations systems are resourced, constructed and organised in different therapeutic areas and countries.
Institutional: The formal and informal processes of regulation that shape medical innovations and their diffusion.
Cultural: The different perceptions of leading practitioners and medical communities as to what constitutes a soluble medical problem.

The research will analyse innovations within ophthalmology and cardiology in the US and the UK. The focus will be on the birth, growth, stabilisation and indeed decline of specific systems within these areas. We expect that the differential processes of the construction of innovation systems play an important role in explaining the unevenness of medical innovation.

The Interfaces and Spaces between Innovation, Demand and Consumption

An ongoing project motivated by the belief that innovation studies has been dominated by supply-side analyses and that there is considerable scope for improving our understanding of innovation processes by paying more attention to social and economic processes mediating between innovation demand and consumption.

Innovation by Demand:
Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Study of Demand and its Role in Innovation
McMeekin, A., Green, K., Tomlinson, M. and Walsh, V.
Published 2002 by Manchester University Press

Mark Harvey, Andrew McMeekin, Sally Randles, Dale Southerton, Bruce Tether & Alan Warde, 'Between Demand & Consumption: A Framework for Research', CRIC Discussion Paper 40.

Some examples of empirical work I have been involved with under this theme:

1. The evolution of consumption

Tomlinson, M. and McMeekin, A. (2002) 'The Role of Routine Behaviour in the Evolution of Consumption', in McMeekin, A., Green, K., Tomlinson, M. and Walsh, V. (2002) "Innovation by Demand: Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Study of Demand and its Role in Innovation', Manchester University Press

McMeekin, A. and Tomlinson, T. (1998) 'Diffusion with Distinction: The Diffusion of Household Durables in the UK', Futures, vol. 30, no. 9, p. 873-886.

Warde, A., Tomlinson, M., and McMeekin, A. 'Expanding Tastes? Cultural Omnivorousness & Social Change in the UK', CRIC Discussion Paper 37.

Tomlinson, M. and McMeekin, A. (1998) "Does the 'Social' have a Role in the Evolution of Consumption?", CRIC Discussion Paper 14, Manchester University.

McMeekin, A. and Tomlinson, M. (1997) "The Diffusion of Household Durables in the UK", CRIC Discussion Paper 4, Manchester University.

2. Innovation, demand and environmental sustainability

"Innovation, demand and environmental sustainability", unpublished PhD thesis, awarded by UMIST, 2001.

"Shaping the Selection Environment: Chlorine in the Dock" in Coombs, R., Green, K., Richards, A. and Walsh, V. (2001) 'Technology and the Market: Demand, Users and Innovation', Edward Elgar. Also available as CRIC Discussion Paper 36.

Green, K., McMeekin, A. and Irwin, A. (1994), "Technological Trajectories and R&D for Environmental Innovation in UK Firms", Futures, vol. 26, no. 10.

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