The Jatropha Biofuels Sector in Tanzania 2005-9: Evolution Towards Sustainability?

Biofuel production has recently attracted a great deal of attention. Some anticipate substantial social and environmental benefits, while at the same time expecting sound profitability for investors. Others are more doubtful, envisaging large trade-offs between the pursuit of social, environmental and economic objectives, particularly in poor countries in the tropics. The paper explores these issues in Tanzania, which is a forerunner in Africa in the cultivation of a bio-oil shrub called Jatropha curcas L. We trace how isolated Jatropha biofuel experiments developed since their inception in early 2005 towards a fully fledged sectoral production and innovation system; and investigate to what extent that system has been capable of developing ànd maintaining sustainable practices and producing sustainable outcomes. The application of evolutionary economic theory allows us to view the development processes in the sector as a result of evolutionary variation and selection on the one hand, and revolutionary contestation between different coalitions of stakeholders on the other. Both these processes constitute significant engines of change in the sector. While variation and selection is driven predominantly by localised learning, the conflict-driven dynamics are highly globalised. The sector is found to have moved some way towards a full sectoral innovation and production system, but it is impossible to predict whether a viable sector with a strong “triple bottom line” orientation will ultimate emerge, since many issues surrounding the social, environmental and financial sustainability still remain unresolved.biofuels, evolutionary theory, innovation systems, sustainability, stakeholder conflict, learning, Tanzania.

Investment in the infrastructure for hydrogen passenger cars – New hype or reality?

Hydrogen fuel cell vehicles have the potential to address both the environmental and oil dependency problems in transportation, but the construction of an infrastructure is a major issue that remains to be solved. This chapter reviews the challenges raised by the investment in infrastructure after the previous “hype” about hydrogen. The chapter analyzes the main obstacles posed by the establishment of a network of refueling stations and examines the strategies that have been followed by countries to deal with these barriers; in particular, in California, Japan, and Germany, where experience has shown how important cooperation is between actors (e.g., automakers, fuel suppliers, technology providers), as well as the support from public authorities to the installation of the early infrastructures. This analysis unveils not only the characteristics of the “revival” of an innovation after the disappointment, but also the strategies that have been followed to again gain visibility and come back to create the car of the future.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

Why matter matters: how technology characteristics shape the strategic framing of technologies

Previous work stresses that actors use strategic technology framing—i.e. purposeful language and rhetoric—to shape technology expectations, persuade stakeholders, and influence the evolution of technologies along their life-cycle. Currently, however, the literature predominantly describes strategic technology framing as a sociopolitical process, and provides only limited insights into how the framing itself is shaped by the material characteristics of the technologies being framed. To address this shortcoming, we conducted a comparative, longitudinal case study of two leading research organizations in the United States and Germany pursuing competing solar photovoltaic (PV) technologies to examine how technology characteristics shape the strategic framing of technologies. We show that to frame PV technologies in their own favor, executives made use of four framing dimensions (potential, prospect, performance, and progress) and three framing tactics (conclusion, conditioning, and concession). Moreover, we show that which framing dimensions and tactics actors selected depended on the maturity and evolution of the technology they pursued, respectively. By highlighting how technology characteristics shape strategic technology framing, we contribute to the literatures on social movements, institutional entrepreneurship, and impression management. Additionally, by providing a coherent framework of strategic technology framing, our study complements existing findings in the literature on the sociology of expectations and contributes to a better understanding of how technology hypes emerge

The co-evolution of societal issues, technologies and industry regimes: three case studies of the American automobile industry

This thesis contributes to closing a gap in the field of science, technology and innovation (STI) policy research: despite many theoretical advances in the field, we still do not know why some urgent societal issues (or ‘challenges’) remain unaddressed, notwithstanding the technological advances that could potentially address them. In particular, radical technological innovations – innovations that depart from the established technological trajectory – would offer greatest potential to address societal challenges. While the source of radical innovations is often new entrepreneurial firms, established firms (‘incumbents’) are likely to play an important role in developing them because of the vast resources and complementary assets they possess. Incumbents however, face few immediate incentives to develop radical innovations in response to societal challenges. The analytical puzzle of this thesis is thus to explain how, when, and why industries change (or not) their strategies (in particular, their technological strategy) in order to address a societal problem. This puzzle is disentangled into interrelated research questions: A) How do societal issue­‐related pressures (on the incumbent industry) from different domains (namely, civil society, science, political arena, economy) evolve? B) How does the incumbent industry respond to changing pressures around societal issues, in terms of technological, political, cultural and economic strategies? C) In particular, when and why do industry actors decide to develop substantive technological responses? To answer these questions, the thesis develops a new analytical perspective that combines insights from (a) issue life­‐cycle and issue attention cycle theories (from the Business & Society field) with (b) the so­‐called ‘Triple Embeddedness Framework’ and (c) concepts from business strategies, innovation management, corporate political strategies, and technology policy. This novel perspective represents an ideal­‐typical model of issue evolution (‘issue life ­‐cycle’). The model, which I call the Dialectic Issue Life­‐Cycle (DILC) model, is applied to three case studies of the American automobile industry’s responses to various societal problems (local air pollution, auto and highway safety, and climate change). Combining qualitative and quantitative research methods in an original way, the case studies aim not only to investigate the validity of the framework, which also provides conceptual answers to the research questions, but also to further refine it and nuance the conceptual answers. By explaining how incumbent industry actors respond to societal challenges, this thesis ultimately contributes to the practical policy debate of how incumbents can be stimulated to develop radical innovations that help address societal challenges

Material Beliefs

Material Beliefs was a two-year research project, based at the Interaction Research Studio in the Department of Design at Goldsmiths, University of London, and funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. The project brought together a network of designers, engineers, scientists and social scientists to explore potential implications of emerging biomedical and cybernetic technologies. The ambition was to produce prototypes, exhibitions and debates that would move scientific research out of laboratories into public spaces. Four designers facilitated the work. They developed relationships with biomedical and cybernetic researchers at UK labs and institutes, guiding a design process in which unfinished scientific research became embodied in speculative products. By responding to social and cultural questions about our expectations of emerging technology, these productions acted as suggestions, not for potential products, but for alternative and often provocative roles for biotechnology in everyday life

A comparative UK-German study of hydrogen fuel cell innovative activity

In this thesis, four questions are answered about the nature of hydrogen fuel cell (HFC) research, demonstration and development (RD&D) activity in the UK and Germany: 1) how, when and where HFC innovation and diffusion has occurred, 2) which socio-technical factors best explain the nature and pace of HFC innovation and diffusion, 3) what would add and enrich theoretical and methodological approaches to researching HFCs within Innovation Studies, and 4) what policy options follow on from these insights. Firstly, a theoretical contribution involves a critique of the Technologically-specific Innovation Systems (TSISs) heuristic in terms of concepts of agency and structure, system delineation, system indicators and the quality of policy guidance. The knowledge gaps that are revealed suggest methodological modifications to the TSIS approach to event histories in terms of organisational funding – whether events are public, private and public-private – and geographical location should also be included in analyses of HFC innovation and diffusion. Secondly, an empirical contribution is made: the provision of two HFC Technological Innovation System (TIS) case studies from the UK and Germany. This evidence suggests sustained positive feedback between system functions is beginning to occur in this niche sector. Over time, HFC technologies are shown to coevolve and branch along certain pathways - and not others - depending upon structural barriers and enablers encountered by HFC actors. Thirdly, there is a contribution to policy based upon the empirical evidence. State actors should recognize that they can take responsibility for encouraging HFC growth and development. Empirically, public-private partnerships (PPPs), when used in combination with state procurement, were shown to offer HFC actors the greatest levels of agency when cutting unit costs and accelerating diffusion. Ultimately, there may well be hybridised or alternative forms of the TSIS heuristic that fare better in their analyses of HFC innovation and diffusion, however, future lines of HFC research using this approach are not advocated here. I have reached this conclusion because the knowledge gaps that I have identified with the TSIS heuristic are likely insurmountable given the TSIS heuristic’s neofunctionalist ontology