Strategies for shifting technological systems : the case of the automobile system

Californian and Dutch efforts to produce electric vehicles are explored and compared. Three strategies are put forward that could turn electric vehicles from an elusive legend, a plaything, into a marketable product: technology forcing creating a market of early promises, experiments geared towards niche development and upscaling (strategic niche management), and the creation of new alliances (technological nexus) which bring technology, the market, regulation and many other factors together. These strategies deployed in the Californian and Dutch context are analysed in detail to explore their relative strengths and weaknesses and to argue in the end that a combined use of all three will increase the chances that the dominant technological system will change. The succesful workings of these strategies crucially depend on the coupling of the variation and selection processes, building blocks for any evolutionary theory of technical change. Evolutionary theory lacks understanding of these coupling processes. Building on recent insights from the sociology of technology, the authors propose a quasi-evolutionary model which underpins the analysis of suggested strategies

COMBINING TOP-DOWN AND BOTTOM-UP APPROACHES TOWARDS SUSTAINABLE LIVESTOCK PRODUCTION A LEARNING AND EXPERIMENTATION STRATEGY

N° ISBN - 978-2-7380-1284-5International audienceOver the past decade, the Dutch Government has increasingly emphasised the need for integral solutions for sustainability problems in the livestock production sector. This led to the adoption of research approaches in line with transition management and system innovation that had been developed in other domains. In 2008, the government set further policy targets of 5% and 100% sustainable livestock production at the farm level for 2011 and 2023 respectively. Policy measures included stimulation of sector initiatives for sustainable agriculture (sectoral innovation agendas) and demand for projects with a focus on system innovation. Two broad approaches may contribute to the realization of these targets, notably top down and bottom up. Top down approaches are usually research-led and characterized by the formulation of visions of future livestock production systems. At the same time a broad variety of bottom up initiatives is taken by farmers who develop and try out new approaches to meet the challenges as they see them. Currently, the links between the bottom up and the top down processes are relatively weak. As both may contribute to a system innovation, a major challenge is to make a fruitful combination between the two approaches. To this end we have developed what we call a “Learning and Experimentation Strategy” (LES) that we will elaborate in the paper

Beyond food for thought : directing sustainability transitions research to address fundamental change in agri-food systems

Dominant agricultural and food systems lead to continuous resource depletion and unacceptable environmental and social impacts. While current calls for changing agrifood systems are increasingly framed in the context of sustainability transitions, they rarely make an explicit link to transition studies to address these systemic challenges, nor do transition scholars sufficiently address agri-food systems, despite their global pertinence. From this viewpoint, we illustrate several gaps in the agri-food systems debate that sustainability transition studies could engage in. We propose four avenues for research in the next decade of transition research on agri-food systems: 1) Crossscale dynamics between coupled systems; 2) Social justice, equity and inclusion; 3) Sustainability transitions in low- and middle-income countries; 4) Cross-sectoral governance and system integration. We call for a decade of new transition research that moves beyond single-scale and sector perspectives toward more inclusive and integrated analyses of food system dynamics