Towards a Transformative Innovation Policy (TIP) research agenda

Throughout 2018 and 2019, academic scholars and policymakers involved in research and practice on science, technology and innovation (STI) policy came together on several occasions to explore intersections of their perspectives around the emerging ‘Transformative Innovation Policy (TIP)’ theme, in the ‘internetwork dialogue’. This working paper presents discussion on ten questions raised in multiple sessions and workshops, categorised under three main themes – 1) conceptualisation, 2) actors and contexts and 3) operationalisation of TIP. The aim of this paper is to present the rich quality and diversity of knowledge shared by over 100 scholars with transdisciplinary expertise, as well as policy professionals willing to contribute practical experience to the scholarly debates. A further aim of this paper is to provide a springboard for accelerating the ongoing developments in TIP research. A virtual conference in 2021 could build on these different streams of knowledge presented in the paper. The paper seeks further contributions from the new network of TIP scholars (TIPRN) in building a vibrant community of practise on TIP

Transformation beyond experimentation: sustainability transitions in megacities

World’s megacities are facing acute sustainability challenges. Persistent problems such as urban pollution, resource depletion, climate change, poverty and social inequalities are shaping unsustainable futures for some of the world’s most populated regions. How can these challenges be tackled? Focusing on the urban mobility regimes that contribute to the acute challenges, this thesis investigates if they can transition toward sustainability. According to sustainability transitions studies, experimentation is vital for making such a transition, through replacing existing unsustainable socio-technical regimes such as fossil fuel-based automobility. Besides niche experimentation, existing regimes can also undergo transformation towards sustainability, being enabled by regime actors. Both experimentation and regime transformation are explored in five studies covering cities like Kolkata, New Delhi and Ahmedabad in India and Bangkok and Chiang Mai in Thailand. However, the majority of the thesis has a strong focus on Kolkata. Following an introduction, the thesis begins with a study exploring diversity in the meaning of sustainability of experiments in different social, spatial and systemic contexts. Focussing on niche experiments, the second study is an analysis of niche actors’ strategies to ‘empower’ sustainable innovations, negotiating with incumbent regime actors in legal and policy spaces. Looking beyond experimentation, a third study focuses on different transition pathways in megacity Kolkata’s public transport regimes. It proposes a new ‘mapping tool’ to identify changes in regime rules, trajectories and selection pressures. In the penultimate paper, a ‘Wheel of Logics’ framework is proposed to develop an understanding of the nature of dynamic stability of regimes in the Global South. Finally, a critical discourse analysis examines whether a smart city imaginary in Kolkata was politically transformative, by analysing the projected distribution of benefits among its citizens, the mechanisms used to democratize the process of constructing the imaginary, and the ways in which citizens’ voices were articulated into the official imaginary. These five studies, tied together, offer a critical understanding of sociotechnical transitions in megacities, by carrying out sustainability appraisals of experiments and developing theoretical frameworks and practical tools for understanding regime dynamics. This way, the thesis offers new conceptual and methodological insights for sustainability transitions, by emphasizing transformations beyond experimentation. These new insights are intended as contribution to shaping sustainable futures in megacities

Smart as democratically transformative? An analysis of ‘Smart City’ sociotechnical imaginary in India

‘Smart cities’ as sociotechnical imaginaries have been enthusiastically embraced by urban planners and policymakers around the world. In 2014, the government of India launched its Smart Cities Mission ostensibly to create socially inclusive and sustainable cities. Aspiring to make their cities smart, and following guidelines provided by the national government, urban authorities from all corners of India submitted proposals to compete in a Smart City Challenge. If successful, they would receive financial and technical support from the national government, to carry out the proposed smart transformations. Focussing on the urban mobility aspects of one such proposal, submitted by New Town, Kolkata, we assess how democratically transformative was the collective process of imagining smart cities in India. A democratically transformative process not only imagines the benefits of smart transformations to be widely distributed across different sections of the city, but it is also participatory and articulated. A participatory process affords possibilities to the most marginalised citizens to engage and raise their diverging and dissenting voices. And an articulated process registers the voices of the most marginalised in the sociotechnical imaginary it produces. Our results indicate that while considerable efforts were made to engage with citizens in the making of the imaginary, the process remained highly uneven and technology-centric, shaped by ‘globalised’ aspirations of urban smartness and by the upper and middle classes, leaving behind the voices and needs of poor and marginalised citizens of Kolkata

Policy, users and discourses: examples from bikeshare programs in (Kolkata) India and (Manila) Philippines

This paper examines two bikeshare programs implemented in two Global South cities, examining the role of users in promoting sustainable transport. To explore the sustainability of smart cycling, we argue that it is important to understand the prevailing administrative and socio-institutional practices within a given context. For the effective stabilisation of smart regimes, harmony between the administrative and socio-institutional practices must be established. In this context, we introduce a complementary approach to understanding transitions. Maintenance of political commitments and institutional support are crucial for cycling success, not incidental footloose initiatives. We explore two case studies in the context of the Global South, in the first one top-down policies and planning initiatives dictate the directions of transitions by enabling or constraining user routines. In the second one, citizens take control to resolve a transport deficit by initiating and driving a very bottom-up user-led transition narrative. We propose a framework to cater to the unique political, cultural and smart discourses of the Global South and the role of users in conjunction with the administrative and socio-institutional practices around them. Investigating both the bikeshare cases through the lens of this framework provides unique insights extending our knowledge beyond the built environment features of sustainable planning initiatives. Our findings reveal the complex narratives that are in play in developing nations and conclude that understanding and realising cycling transitions in southern megacities require a different approach compared to the Global North

Smart as (un)democratic? The making of a smart city imaginary in Kolkata, India

‘Smart’ imaginaries have been enthusiastically embraced by urban planners and policymakers around the world. Indians are no exception. Between 2015–2018, following national government guidelines to use participatory and inclusive processes, many cities developed proposals for a smart city challenge. Successful proposals received financial and technical support from the national government. We examine the making of the smart city proposal submitted by New Town Kolkata (NTK). We ask how (un)democratic was the making of the proposal, along three aspects: distributive, participatory, and responsive. Based on an analysis of documents and interviews with policymakers and citizens, we find that NTK’s smart city imaginary largely failed to be distributive. It rarely accounted for the specific needs of poorer and vulnerable citizens. City officials invested considerable effort in using participatory techniques, but citizen participation was tightly controlled through top-down design and practice of the techniques. The latter often facilitated one-way flow of information from the city administration to the citizens. The proposal was responsive to some citizens’ voices, but only those belonging to the more affluent classes. A messy diversity of citizens’ voices was thus closed down, as the city officials filtered and cherry-picked citizens’ voices that were well-aligned with the official technocratic vision of ‘global’ smart urbanism. The paper shows how democracy can be put in the service of technocracy, within a rhetoric of citizen participation and social inclusion that embodies smart urbanism

Just transitions for industrial decarbonisation: a framework for innovation, participation, and justice

Here we propose a framework for considering the justice issues of industrial cluster decarbonisation, a pressing challenge confronting many industrialised economies. Industrial clusters are large, multi-point source emitters, users of energy and employers of regional and national significance. In the UK, establishing low carbon industrial clusters is one of several grand challenges of industrial strategy. Theorising the just transition of industrial clusters requires concepts from multiple literatures. We abstract relevant themes from the intersections of the literatures of just transitions, innovation studies and sociotechnical transitions, and public participation in spatial planning, and illustrate their empirical relevance. The broad themes of our framework are (i) politics, space and institutions, with sub-themes of justice, democracy, financialization; (ii) new processes and procedures, with sub-themes of legal recognition of public concerns, community-based planning, community capacity enhancement and life cycle impact assessment; and (iii) correlates of acceptance and resistance, with sub-themes of environmental values, perceived loss of amenity, pre-existing politics, perceptions of just process and trust in the developer. The framework is intended to both guide the design of just transition processes ex-ante and evaluate these post-hoc

Pluralizing urban futures : A multicriteria mapping analysis of online taxis in Indonesia

The exploration of urban future storylines of transformative change is subject to socio-political processes rather than a mere, objective envisioning of the desirable city. Approaches in urban imagination and planning processes should thus consider plural perspectives across a range of actors and stakeholders beyond the usual suspects of experts and professionals.This paper mobilizes the case of the emergence of online taxis in Indonesia to embrace a more inclusive approach to the assessment of urban mobility futures by employing multi-criteria mapping (MCM) analysis and combining it with an open dialog on future storylines. We answer the question of what insights can be derived from diversifying future storylines in the online taxi industry in Indonesia? From applying a more inclusive approach in constructing future imaginaries we derive four insights: 1) criteria to appraise the future are never purely technological; 2) there is a difference in perceptions of time horizons among actors when imagining futures; 3) perceptions of time horizons are shaped by actor backgrounds and social interactions; and 4) the MCM method contributed to helping individuals to focus and explore their future storylines

Unpacking sustainabilities in diverse transition contexts: solar photovoltaic and urban mobility experiments in India and Thailand

It is generally accepted that the concept of sustainability is not straightforward, but is subject to ongoing ambiguities, uncertainties and contestations. Yet literature on sustainability transitions has so far only engaged in limited ways with the resulting tough questions around what sustainability means, to whom and in which contexts. This paper makes a contribution to this debate by unpacking sustainability in India and Thailand in the context of solar photovoltaic and urban mobility experimentation. Building on a database of sustainability experiments and multicriteria mapping techniques applied in two workshops, the paper concludes that sustainability transition scholarship and associated governance strategies must engage with such questions in at least three important ways. First, there is a need for extreme caution in assuming any objective status for the sustainability of innovations, and for greater reflection on the normative implications of case study choices. Second, sustainability transition scholarship and governance must engage more with the unpacking of uncertainties and diverse possible socio-technical configurations even within (apparently) singular technological fields. Third, sustainability transition scholarship must be more explicit and reflective about the specific geographical contexts within which the sustainability of experimentation is addressed

Call for papers: sustainability transitions in the Global South – learnings from COVID-19 and future directions

Call for paper

Experiments in climate governance – reflections on a workshop

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