The diffusion of knowledge among innovators is vital to progress at technologically complex innovation frontiers. Yet competitive incentives between innovators may prevent them from sharing useful advancements with each other. In this multi-year ethnographic study of three shared R&D facilities in the field of semiconductor research, I examine how concrete solutions to shared technical problems can nonetheless be safely diffused among innovators through the “safe diffusion strategies” of the technicians that oversee the tools that innovators have in common. These technicians were unaffiliated with any one innovator but instead with the shared equipment that all innovators had to use. I detail how technicians used their role in the division of labor to elicit greater disclosure of effective solutions from innovators, assess the risks of sharing these solutions, and recognize unique avenues for safely sharing solutions across innovation projects. In particular, technicians leveraged their command over tools, materials and techniques to contain the technical scope of the solutions they diffused and to distill generalized guidance from the solutions they withheld. By extending our understanding of selective knowledge diffusion in competitive settings to other members of innovation ecosystems that are often overlooked but nonetheless essential to conducting technologically complex work, this paper documents a previously unrecognized avenue by which valuable knowledge can diffuse at competitive innovation frontiers. In so doing, it extends the role theoretically accorded to supporting, technical occupations in the advancement of these frontiers.
