Expl. Agric. (2009), volume 45, pp. 295–312 C  2009 Cambridge University Press doi:10.1017/S0014479709007881 First published online 15 May 2009 Printed in the United Kingdom ON-FARM INNOVATION IN THE AUSTRALIAN WOOL INDUSTRY: A SENSEMAKING PERSPECTIVE By JOANNE N. SNEDDON ∗ †, GEOFFREY N. SOUTAR and TIM MAZZAROL University of Western Australia Business School, 35 Stirling Highway, Crawley, WA 6006, Australia (Accepted 22 April 2009) SUMMARY In agricultural innovation, the success of widely used technologies is often assumed to have been inevitable. Conversely, the blame for the failure of new technologies that researchers, policy makers and extensionists consider superior to existing solutions is often placed on farmers. However, these assumptions can be challenged by taking a social-constructivist view of on-farm innovation to examine how and why farmers made sense of new technologies and how this sensemaking shaped their use of these technologies over time. The present study took such an approach in its analysis of Australian woolgrowers’ adoption, abandonment, implementation and use of new wool-testing technologies that highlighted the social and dynamic nature of innovation on-farm. On-farm innovation in this case was an evolving, dynamic process that changed over time as woolgrowers made sense of new technologies. The primary message to agricultural innovation researchers, technology developers, policy makers and extensionists is that successful on-farm innovation requires the active, ongoing engagement of industry participants. In order to engage industry participants in the innovation process, sensemakers’ personal identity frames and social context, and how these interpretation frameworks relate to the new technology need to be understood. INTRODUCTION For many years, technology has been considered a silver bullet that can solve the profitability, productivity and sustainability problems that many agricultural industries face. However, new agricultural technologies often fail to meet researchers’, practitioners’ and end-users’ expectations. The gap between what industry participants expected of new agricultural technologies and what is delivered can be seen in the variable levels of technology use and industry impact (e.g. Barnett and Sneddon, 2006a; 2006b; Carletto, de Janvry and Sadoulet, 1996; Moser and Barrett, 2003; Neill and Lee, 2001). In agricultural innovation, technologies that are widely accepted and used are often assumed to be what Pinch and Bijker (1987) term technologically sweet, which means they were an advanced piece of science and engineering that resolved the problem which they were designed to address and that their success was inevitable. Conversely, the blame for the rejection, abandonment or failure to adopt and implement new technologies that researchers, policy makers and extensionists consider superior to existing solutions is often placed on farmers ∗ Corresponding author: joanne.sneddon@uwa.edu.au †Present address: University of Western Australia Business School M404, 35 Stirling Highway, Crawley, WA 6006, Australia