In the case of tank technology, the relationship between the configuration of the various technical characteristics of the tank (road speed, armor, armament caliber, etc.) and the performance attributes is relatively straightforward. The task of tank designers was to search for technical solutions that translated into acceptable performance levels. The tank-at least in the period we consider-constituted a complex engineering product aimed at achieving certain performance results (in most general terms: mobility, firepower and protection).

However, we contend that, from our case study, one could also draw implications with general bearings for the innovation studies literature. Tanks represent one of the major innovations in military technology introduced in the first half of the twentieth century, and the history of their development presents several points of interest in its own right (Hacker 2005).

This is a period that has been singled out as particularly interesting both by historians of technology and by military historians. In particular, we present an historical study of the evolution of tanks for the period 1915–1945. The main aim of this paper is to re-visit the original potentialities of Dosi’s framework in a detailed case-study of the evolution of a specific technology.

Besides these authors, however, most of the literature has adopted the notions of paradigms and trajectories in a rather loose way, mainly as metaphors featuring in broad (‘appreciative’) reconstructions of the patterns of technological evolution. Footnote 1 Since the seminal contributions by Dosi ( 1982, 1988), Footnote 2 several authors have devoted substantial efforts to provide detailed empirical analyses of the process of technical change employing this framework (see, amongst others, Sahal 1985 and Saviotti 1996). The notions of technological paradigms and technological trajectories have exerted a wide appeal among economists and other social scientists working in the field of innovation studies.

Average size of a military tank