Creative destruction or mere niche creation? Innovation policy mixes for sustainability transitions

Recently, there has been an increasing interest in policy mixes in innovation studies. While it has long been acknowledged that the stimulation of innovation and technological change involves different types of policy instruments, how such instruments form policy mixes has only recently become of interest. We argue that an area in which policy mixes are particularly important is the field of sustainability transitions. Transitions imply not only the development of disruptive innovations but also of policies aiming for wider change in socio-technical systems. We propose that ideally policy mixes for transitions include elements of ‘creative destruction’, involving both policies aiming for the ‘creation’ of new and for ‘destabilising’ the old. We develop a novel analytical framework including the two policy mix dimensions (‘creation’ and ‘destruction’) by broadening the technological innovation system functions approach, and specifically by expanding the concept of ‘motors of innovation’ to ‘motors of creative destruction’. We test this framework by analysing ‘low energy’ policy mixes in Finland and the UK. We find that both countries have diverse policy mixes to support energy efficiency and reduce energy demand with instruments to cover all functions on the creation side. Despite the demonstrated need for such policies, unsurprisingly, destabilising functions are addressed by fewer policies, but there are empirical examples of such policies in both countries. The concept of ‘motors of creative destruction’ is introduced to expand innovation and technology policy debates to go beyond policy mixes consisting of technology push and demand pull instruments, and to consider a wider range of policy instruments combined in a suitable mix which may contribute to sustainability transitions

Farm enterprises as self-organizing systems: A new transdisciplinary framework for studying farm enterprises?

The growing attention to sustainable food production and multifunctional agriculture calls for a multidisciplinary or transdisciplinary research and development perspective on farming, which is able to grasp the environmental, social, technical, and financial aspects of a farm and the dynamic relationship between the farm enterprises and the surrounding world. Our thesis is that a transdisciplinary approach needs to build on a working ontology that goes beyond the epistemology of each discipline and that is not just pieced together of the ontologies connected to these different epistemologies. Based on a review of three prevailing theoretical frameworks within the field of agro-sociology: The farming styles approach, the Bawden approach, and Conway’s agroecosystem approach, we argue that these existing theories do not offer such a theoretical framework. The claim of this paper is that a new concept of a farm enterprise as a self-organizing social system, which combines ideas from Actor-Network theory (ANT) and Luhmann’s theory of social systems, can serve as a useful ontological platform for understanding a farm-enterprise as an entity independent of a scientific observer. In this framework, each farm is understood as a self-organizing node in a complex of heterogeneous socio-technical networks of food, supply, knowledge, technology, etc. This implies that a farm has to be understood as the way in which these network relationships are organised by the farm as a self-organizing social system. Among all the different possible ways in which to interact with the surrounding world, the system has to select a coherent strategy in order to make the farming processes possible at all. It will be discussed how this framework may add to the understanding of the continuous development of a heterogeneity of farm strategies and contribute to a more comprehensive view of the fields of regulation and extension

Chinese firms entering China's low-income market: Gaining competitive advantage by partnering governments

This paper investigates poverty alleviation efforts in China and the nature of governmententerprise partnerships there. We argue that firms partnering central and local governments can be an effective strategy to overcome resource-based obstacles in low-income markets. In China, local and central governments are owners of rare and valuable resources, thus offering better access to finance, infrastructure, technical and planning expertise, advocacy through government marketing and distribution channels, and links to other stakeholders. The findings are based on 16 case studies of firms entering the low-income market in China, of which two cases in the agricultural and telecommunication sector are studied in depth. --Partnerships,government,poverty alleviation,China,base of the pyramid

The Critical Role of Public Charging Infrastructure

Editors: Peter Fox-Penner, PhD, Z. Justin Ren, PhD, David O. JermainA decade after the launch of the contemporary global electric vehicle (EV) market, most cities face a major challenge preparing for rising EV demand. Some cities, and the leaders who shape them, are meeting and even leading demand for EV infrastructure. This book aggregates deep, groundbreaking research in the areas of urban EV deployment for city managers, private developers, urban planners, and utilities who want to understand and lead change

Real Options Methodology Applied to the ICT Sector: A Survey

This survey focuses on the application of real options methodology to the information and communications technology (ICT) industries. It examines the development of the methodology to areas as diverse as wireless cell site investments to dynamic pricing issues. In addition to aiding the reader in understanding the breadth of the applications, it demonstrates the importance of the topic. It provides a guide to the reader who is interested in exploring the topic in greater depth.Discounted cash flow, economic methodology, information and communications technology (ICT), investment, investment under uncertainty, options, present discounted value, real options, valuations.

The Case for Liberal Spectrum Licenses: A Technical and Economic Perspective

The traditional system of radio spectrum allocation has inefficiently restricted wireless services. Alternatively, liberal licenses ceding de facto spectrum ownership rights yield incentives for operators to maximize airwave value. These authorizations have been widely used for mobile services in the U.S. and internationally, leading to the development of highly productive services and waves of innovation in technology, applications and business models. Serious challenges to the efficacy of such a spectrum regime have arisen, however. Seeing the widespread adoption of such devices as cordless phones and wi-fi radios using bands set aside for unlicensed use, some scholars and policy makers posit that spectrum sharing technologies have become cheap and easy to deploy, mitigating airwave scarcity and, therefore, the utility of exclusive rights. This paper evaluates such claims technically and economically. We demonstrate that spectrum scarcity is alive and well. Costly conflicts over airwave use not only continue, but have intensified with scientific advances that dramatically improve the functionality of wireless devices and so increase demand for spectrum access. Exclusive ownership rights help direct spectrum inputs to where they deliver the highest social gains, making exclusive property rules relatively more socially valuable. Liberal licenses efficiently accommodate rival business models (including those commonly associated with unlicensed spectrum allocations) while mitigating the constraints levied on spectrum use by regulators imposing restrictions in traditional licenses or via use rules and technology standards in unlicensed spectrum allocations.

Privatisation, Regulation, and Competition in South Asia

Privatisation has begun to accelerate in India and Pakistan. However, it is not clear that a change in ownership per se will contribute significantly to a more rapid, efficient, and equitable growth unless policies that ensure competition for these enterprises and remove distortions in factor markets also are undertaken at the same time or prior to privatisation. After a brief discussion of the transition from state-led development to more market-oriented policies and gradual opening to world markets, this paper reviews some of the analytical literature on privatisation and regulation. The translation of these theories into concrete policy suggestions is difficult for countries such as Pakistan and India, where many of the assumptions behind the theories do not hold. However, the results of empirical studies on past privatisations around the world do hold lessons for South Asia. Similarly, theories of regulation offer only broad recommendations, most notably (for South Asia) that regulation is not the best way to redistribute resources. The final section of the paper reviews India’s and Pakistan’s experience with privatisation thus far. Attempted privatisation of electricity in India serves as an example of the need for more attention to regulation, while the transfer of ownership has led to better service at lower cost in the telecommunications sector. Pakistan’s privatisation programme appears to have had similarly mixed results, though it is difficult to come to firm conclusions with the evidence at hand.

EMERGENCE, ORGANIZATIONAL TRANSFORMATIONS, AND DECLINE OF THE PIQUETERO MOVEMENT: A COMPARATIVE INSTITUTIONAL EXPLANATION

This paper offers an institutional explanation for the growth, organizational transformations, and decline of the piquetero social movement in Argentina, developed from a comparative perspective based on Latin America. I analyze which institutional arrangements, political actors, and configurations of power contributed to the success and decline of the piqueteros. Applying the basic principles of the rational choice approach, I find that the success, decline, and transformation of the organizational structures of the piquetero movement were mainly produced by a political cycle of deep political division within the ruling party (the Peronist party). Other socio-economic explanatory factors were the over-regulated Argentine labor market, and the exogenous impact of the Argentine economic crisis through relatively high unemployment rates.piqueteros; emergence; decline; transformation; social movement; Argentina