Confronting the second deep transition through the historical imagination

Leonardo da Vinci Addres

Moving innovation policy from a competition to a transformative change agenda

This paper will develop the argument why innovation policy needs to get out of the ghetto of a too narrow focus on science and technology. The main reason is that the world is in transition. This shifting con-text for innovation puts completely new demands on innovation policy. In the first paper of the paper I will discuss the various dimensions of the world in transition. I will not only deal with the current economic crisis, the digital revolution, globalization, and the emergence of new consumer markets both in the West and the Global South, but also discuss a number of persistent problems in the modern way of provisioning basic needs and argue why this is not sustainable in the long run. The conclusion of this section will be that we need to move away from a costly “business as usual approach” to these problems, and that it is time to ad-dress these issues head on through an innovation policy lens which aims at transformative change (and less at gaining a competitive advantage). In the second part I will discuss the opportunities and limitations of innovation policy addressing these challenges. Innovation will be positioned as a core characteristic of modern capitalist societies. It will be argued that we are in the need of a new social contract for an inclusive capitalist society and economy in which we keep our ability to innovate, yet also find new ways of directing and embedding innovations into socially desirable directions from the outset. It is not only firms and the state who are key stakeholders for a future innovation policy, but also consumers as users need to be involved, as well as citizens and civil society. If we accept that the core problems of the world in transition can and should be addressed through innovation policies, the next question is which will be addressed in the final part of the paper is what such as policies should look like? I will argue that innovation policy should do two interrelated things: stimulate in-vestment and provide direction. It should stimulate investment throughout the entire innovation chain, from invention, to innovation and diffusion. We need to think far beyond support for R&D and the prioritisation of specific research avenues. What is necessary is support for the constant tinkering and re-making of systems, and the development of new services and organisational models to meet social as well as economic challenges. We need to ensure that all actors benefit, not only firms but also the state and the public. Second-ly it should provide direction to innovation, which is not always easy. It should begin with the opening up of innovation portfolios, allowing consideration of a greater diversity of options, without falling back all-too-easily on polarised “for” or “against” arguments. Instead, innovation policy should allow for more exploration and experimentation outside the narrow boundaries often set by incumbents, with scientific advice based on a wider range of perspectives, and nurture a policy making process which provides an opportunity for various stakeholders to challenge dominant and less-dominant views. Innovation policy involves fundamental political questions, which present crucial areas for democratic deliberation. So innovation also has the potential to reinvigorate the future of our fragile democracies.How then can innovation policy help to provide direction? I would like to propose four options –not as a comprehensive set but as a way to fire the imagination: firstly, foresight; second, experimentation; third-ly, through innovative institutions, and fourthly, fusing a wider range of expertise. All four avenues will be elaborated on the in the paper. For Foresight it will be argued that the non-linear nature of technical change means new developments will inevitably occur in ways which could not be foreseen. To overcome this problem, foresight should be organized as a continuous effort across the entire innovation chain from invention to wider diffusion –involving both social as much as technical processes. We need to use foresight more effectively as an instrument for giving voice to a wide range of expectations and aspirations about the future and for orientating and directing investment decisions. For experimentation, it will be argued that we need to experiment more and on a larger scale with new emerging technologies. There is no lack of demonstration projects and pilots with new technologies. However, they are often organized in an ad-hoc fashion, focus on technical challenges, and then leave it to the market to commercialize and standardize solutions. They are often not geared towards exploring and exploiting how new technologies present opportunities for addressing societal challenges, and then how to capture value in a later stage of the innovation chain. We need to allow for bigger experiments, build more connections between them, and focus on experimenting with societal impacts too. Perhaps innovation policy should provide consortia of actors, including market, state and civil society ones, a licence to experiment with new solutions on a much larger scale than is currently the case, and for a suitable, longer time period. For the third stream which focuses on new institutions, it will be argued that we need to bring together state, business, academic and wider societal actors to facilitate discussion and negotiation on the direction of innovation. In our current system we have on the one hand policies and programs for the promotion of new technological opportunities through R&D support and tax credits, for example, via the policies of Innovate UK. On the other hand, there are policies for discussing, controlling and regulating the negative impacts of technology. What is missing are institutionalized processes to facilitate societal learning and create a culture in which responsibilities can be shared. For the fourth stream of fusing a wide range of expertise, it will be argued that socio-technical change needs education and training programs which go beyond specialist career paths and develop a next generation of leaders who understand the need to work in interdisciplinary teams and are able to combine technological and social aspects in order to innovate

Three frames for innovation policy: R&D, systems of innovation and transformative change

Science, technology and innovation (STI) policy is shaped by persistent framings that arise from historical context. Two established frames are identified as co-existing and dominant in contemporary innovation policy discussions. The first frame is identified as beginning with a Post-World War II institutionalisation of government support for science and R&D with the presumption that this would contribute to growth and address market failure in private provision of new knowledge. The second frame emerged in the 1980s globalising world and its emphasis on competitiveness which is shaped by the national systems of innovation for knowledge creation and commercialisation. STI policy focuses on building links, clusters and networks, and on stimulating learning between elements in the systems, and enabling entrepreneurship. A third frame linked to contemporary social and environmental challenges such as the Sustainable Development Goals and calling for transformative change is identified and distinguished from the two earlier frames. Transformation refers to socio-technical system change as conceptualised in the sustainability transitions literature. The nature of this third framing is examined with the aim of identifying its key features and its potential for provoking a re-examination of the earlier two frames. One key feature is its focus on experimentation, and the argument that the Global South does not need to play catch-up to follow the transformation model of the Global North. It is argued that all three frames are relevant for policymaking, but exploring options for transformative innovation policy should be a priority

Deep transitions: emergence, acceleration, stabilization and directionality

The unfolding of industrial modernity has led to high levels of wealth and welfare in the Western world but also to increasing global ecological degradation and social inequality. The routine mode of operation of a wide range of socio-technical systems, forming the material backbone of contemporary societies, has substantially contributed to these outcomes. This paper proposes that all these systems can be seen as a surface expression of fundamental meta-rules that for the past 250 years have driven the evolution of these systems and system innovation towards particular directions, thereby constituting the First Deep Transition. To meet the accumulated social and ecological challenges would therefore require a radical change not only in socio-technical systems but also in meta-rules underlying their functioning – the Second Deep Transition. This paper develops a new theoretical framework aiming to explain the emergence, acceleration, stabilization and directionality of Deep Transitions. It does so through the synthesis of three strands of literature: individual socio-technical systems, interconnected systems and industrialization-related macro-trends

User-made immobilities: a transitions perspective

In this paper we aim to conceptualize the role of users in creating, expanding and stabilizing the automobility system. Drawing on transition studies we offer a typology of user roles including user-producers, user-legitimators, user-intermediaries, user-citizens and user-consumers, and explore it on the historical transition to the automobile regime in the USA. We find that users play an important role during the entire transition process but some roles are more salient than others in particular phases. Another finding is that the success of the transitions depends on the stabilization of the emerging regime which will trigger upscaling in terms of the numbers of adopters. The findings are used to reflect on potential crossovers between transitions and mobilities research

Deep transitions: emergence, acceleration, stabilization and directionality

Industrial society has not only led to high levels of wealth and welfare in the Western world, but also to increasing global ecological degradation and social inequality. The socio-technical systems that underlay contemporary societies have substantially contributed to these outcomes. This paper proposes that these socio-technical systems are an expression of a limited number of meta-rules that, for the past 250 years, have driven innovation and hence system evolution in a particular direction, thereby constituting the First Deep Transition. Meeting the cumulative social and ecological consequences of the overall direction of the First Deep Transition would require a radical change, not only in socio-technical systems but also in the meta-rules driving their evolution – the Second Deep Transition. This paper develops a new theoretical framework that aims to explain the emergence, acceleration, stabilization and directionality of Deep Transitions. It does so through the synthesis of two literatures that have attempted to explain large-scale and long-term socio-technical change: the Multi-level Perspective (MLP) on socio-technical transitions, and Techno-economic Paradigm (TEP) framework

Inclusive innovation and multi-regime dynamics: the case of mobile money in Kenya

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Deep transitions: emergence, acceleration, stabilization and directionality

The unfolding of industrial modernity has led to high levels of wealth and welfare in the Western world but also to increasing global ecological degradation and social inequality. The routine mode of operation of a wide range of socio-technical systems, forming the material backbone of contemporary societies, has substantially contributed to these outcomes. This paper proposes that all these systems can be seen as a surface expression of fundamental meta-rules that for the past 250 years have driven the evolution of these systems and system innovation towards particular directions, thereby constituting the First Deep Transition. To meet the accumulated social and ecological challenges would therefore require a radical change not only in socio-technical systems but also in meta-rules underlying their functioning – the Second Deep Transition. This paper develops a new theoretical framework aiming to explain the emergence, acceleration, stabilization and directionality of Deep Transitions. It does so through the synthesis of three strands of literature: individual socio-technical systems, interconnected systems and industrialization-related macro-trends

Crafting stories of technology and progress: five considerations

In telling technology’s stories of social progress, we are right to celebrate unprecedented advances in health and education, transport and computation. But we must point out hidden costs, uneven distributions, and unequal access. We must open our stories to a wider cast of characters, be they heroes, villains, or those with ambiguous intent, and we must confront the individuals, interests, and institutions that propel technological change for better or worse

Deep transitions: theorizing the long-term patterns of socio-technical change

The contemporary world is confronted by a double challenge: environmental degradation and social inequality. This challenge is linked to the dynamics of the First Deep Transition (Schot, 2016): the creation and expansion of a wide range of socio-technical systems in a similar direction over the past 200–250?years. Extending the theoretical framework of Schot and Kanger (2018), this paper proposes that the First Deep Transition has been built up through successive Great Surges of Development (Perez, 2002), leading to the emergence of a macro-level selection environment called industrial modernity. This has resulted in the formation of a portfolio of directionality, characterized by dominant and durable directions and occasional discontinuous shifts in addition to a continuous variety of alternatives sustained in niches or single systems. This historically-informed view on the co-evolution of single socio-technical systems, complexes of systems and industrial modernity has distinctive implications for policy-making targeted at resolving the current challenges