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

Experimentation or projectification of urban change?:A critical appraisal and three steps forward

Urban experimentation has proliferated in recent years as a response to sustainability challenges and renewed pressures on urban governance. In many European cities, diverse and rapidly changing experimental forms (e.g. urban living laboratories, pilots, trials, experimental districts) are becoming commonplace, addressing ambitious goals for smartness, circularity, and liveability. Academically, there is a growing concern for moving beyond the focus on individual experiments and the insistence on upscaling their primary transformation mechanism. However, the phenomena of 'projectification' - whereby project-based forms of organising have become ubiquitous, shaping expectations about experimentation - is increasingly perceived as a barrier. Nevertheless, how specifically experimentation and projectification intersect remains unclear. Our theoretical perspective examines how the widespread tendency towards projectification shapes urban experimentation and the potential implications for urban transformations. It problematises the current wave of experimentation and how it contributes to the projectification of urban change processes. We present three steps to redress this issue and indicate directions for future research.</p

Sustainability transitions in Los Angeles’ water system:the ambivalent role of incumbents in urban experimentation

Growing urban populations, climate change, drought, and ageing infrastructures increase pressure on water delivery. This prompts the search for innovations, with incumbents increasingly attempting to enable and steer ‘experimental’ approaches. Historically, incumbents were assumed to be largely resistant to potentially disruptive innovations. However, their strategic orientations may be changing due to the urgency of sustainability challenges leading to increased experimentation. This change raises a question about how incumbents influence experiments in particular directions while neglecting or discouraging others. This research centers on the ‘La Kretz Innovation Campus’, and three experiments therein, partly established by the incumbent water utility in Los Angeles. It explores how creating an internal ‘protective space’ for experimentation generates struggles over institutional changes necessary for such experiments to thrive. Conceptualizing ‘incumbent-enabled experimentation’ as a set of practices nested within novel institutional, organizational, and political arrangements reveals the internal tensions incumbents face when seeking more sustainable directions.</p

Sustainability transitions in Los Angeles’ water system: the ambivalent role of incumbents in urban experimentation

Growing urban populations, climate change, drought, and ageing infrastructures increase pressure on water delivery. This prompts the search for innovations, with incumbents increasingly attempting to enable and steer ‘experimental’ approaches. Historically, incumbents were assumed to be largely resistant to potentially disruptive innovations. However, their strategic orientations may be changing due to the urgency of sustainability challenges leading to increased experimentation. This change raises a question about how incumbents influence experiments in particular directions while neglecting or discouraging others. This research centers on the ‘La Kretz Innovation Campus’, and three experiments therein, partly established by the incumbent water utility in Los Angeles. It explores how creating an internal ‘protective space’ for experimentation generates struggles over institutional changes necessary for such experiments to thrive. Conceptualizing ‘incumbent-enabled experimentation’ as a set of practices nested within novel institutional, organizational, and political arrangements reveals the internal tensions incumbents face when seeking more sustainable directions

The formation of favourable environments for urban experimentation: contextual dynamics and transformative capacities in Bristol and Medellín

This is a study of the contexts in which urban experimentation flourishes. I aim to understand how favourable environments for experimentation form and how they may be mobilised to generate the capacities that underpin urban transformations. Experiments - practice-based, learning-oriented, and challenge-led initiatives and projects - feature prominently in contemporary attempts to rekindle urban governance to address climate change and foster sustainability. Despite current research interest, how certain cities sustain vibrant experimentation and whether that generates transformative capacities remain underexplored. Research on urban experimentation is blooming within the field of sustainability transitions. However, there is little clarity about how place and context matter. The uneven geographies of experimentation are under-conceptualised. Most empirical research traces specific experiments or sequences of experiments associated with a given technology. Hence, there is a neglect of the multiplicity of experimental processes embedded in a particular urban context. To address these issues, I draw, critique and expand on strategic niche management and the geography of transitions, to argue for an alternative analytical strategy and conceptualisation of urban experimentation. The thesis begins with an extended background chapter engaging with conceptual debates on the role of urban experimentation in urban transformations, followed by three interlocking research articles. The first presents a place-based approach and a case study of the environment for civic energy experimentation in Bristol (UK). The second scrutinises studies on the contexts for urban experimentation, deriving three lenses that facilitate context-sensitive studies to pluralise the debate on how to foment experimentation. The third examines the contextual dynamics influencing the mobility experiments and development of transformative capacities in Medellín (Colombia). My research contributes to understanding how experiments and context co-evolve, highlighting the recurring dynamics which allow the generation and retention of urban transformative capacity. It enables stakeholders to reflect on how to mobilise experimentation to further urban transformations

Review article: pharmacotherapy for alcohol dependence - the why, the what and the wherefore

BACKGROUND: The development of alcohol dependence is associated with significant morbidity and mortality. For the majority of affected people the most appropriate goal, in terms of drinking behaviour, is abstinence from alcohol. Psychosocial intervention is the mainstay of the treatment but adjuvant pharmacotherapy is also available and its use recommended. AIM: To provide an updated analysis of current and potential pharmacotherapeutic options for the management of alcohol dependence. In addition, factors predictive of therapeutic outcome, including compliance and pharmacogenetics, and the current barriers to treatment, including doctors' unwillingness to prescribe these agents, will be explored. METHODS: Relevant papers were selected for review following extensive, language- and date-unrestricted, electronic and manual searches of the literature. RESULTS: Acamprosate and naltrexone have a substantial evidence base for overall efficacy, safety and cost-effectiveness while the risks associated with the use of disulfiram are well-known and can be minimised with appropriate patient selection and supervision. Acamprosate can be used safely in patients with liver disease and in those with comorbid mental health issues and co-occurring drug-related problems. A number of other agents are being investigated for potential use for this indication including: baclofen, topiramate and metadoxine. CONCLUSION: Pharmacotherapy for alcohol dependence has been shown to be moderately efficacious with few safety concerns, but it is substantially underutilised. Concerted efforts must be made to remove the barriers to treatment in order to optimise the management of people with this condition

Bridging the gap between resource use and Planetary Boundaries

Impacts of human agency have become a major driver in the Earth System, with magnitude comparable to that of natural occurring global processes. Several earth system processes are under substantial pressure.  These human induced pressures are likely to increase, potentially leading to undesirable changes at planetary scale. In that context, the Planetary Boundaries concept has been put forward aiming at defining a “safe operating space” for future endurance of humanity: relevant processes were identified with associated boundaries that, if respected, would avoid large-scale or irreversible change. The present study explores how human driven resource use relates to the Planetary Boundaries concept, through a water-food-energy-climate nexus perspective. It aims at identifying alternatives for the consideration of biophysical constraints in ways resources are modelled, and it presents an account of the current elements that hinder the integration of new constraints. The study found that existing Integrated Assessment Models and conceptual models for exploring Climate-Land-Energy-Water Strategies present important contributions, but further integration is necessary. Furthermore, decision-making support tools in these models were designed to assess mitigation options for climate, but cannot yet be used for multi-goal or multi-constraints studies. Scenario studies were found to be an important and yet underappreciated tool for such integration. The study identified novel techniques for scenario construction that could be applied in this context – they can allow the construction of sets of scenarios to bridge across scales or to connect separate modelling communities. The study suggests that for bridging the current gaps that exist between concepts it is necessary to develop an active interface across research communities involved in global change research, integrated assessment and resource modelling communities. These interfaces need to allow the co-development of concepts, the sharing of data and the confrontation of different perspectives on the shared challenge of exploring potential pathways for sustainability. Planetary Boundaries research initiativ

Bridging the gap between resource use and Planetary Boundaries

Impacts of human agency have become a major driver in the Earth System, with magnitude comparable to that of natural occurring global processes. Several earth system processes are under substantial pressure.  These human induced pressures are likely to increase, potentially leading to undesirable changes at planetary scale. In that context, the Planetary Boundaries concept has been put forward aiming at defining a “safe operating space” for future endurance of humanity: relevant processes were identified with associated boundaries that, if respected, would avoid large-scale or irreversible change. The present study explores how human driven resource use relates to the Planetary Boundaries concept, through a water-food-energy-climate nexus perspective. It aims at identifying alternatives for the consideration of biophysical constraints in ways resources are modelled, and it presents an account of the current elements that hinder the integration of new constraints. The study found that existing Integrated Assessment Models and conceptual models for exploring Climate-Land-Energy-Water Strategies present important contributions, but further integration is necessary. Furthermore, decision-making support tools in these models were designed to assess mitigation options for climate, but cannot yet be used for multi-goal or multi-constraints studies. Scenario studies were found to be an important and yet underappreciated tool for such integration. The study identified novel techniques for scenario construction that could be applied in this context – they can allow the construction of sets of scenarios to bridge across scales or to connect separate modelling communities. The study suggests that for bridging the current gaps that exist between concepts it is necessary to develop an active interface across research communities involved in global change research, integrated assessment and resource modelling communities. These interfaces need to allow the co-development of concepts, the sharing of data and the confrontation of different perspectives on the shared challenge of exploring potential pathways for sustainability. Planetary Boundaries research initiativ

Experimenting with automated driving for technology or for the city? A matter of governance cultures

Urban experiments have been promoted as means to enable innovation for sustainability, particularly in urban mobility. Yet, they have been criticized for struggling to stimulate broader transformations, as they often are detached from public-value principles, lack embeddedness in the cities' everyday realities and are industry-oriented. How cultural changes on different governance levels intersect to produce urban experiments with transformative potential has received little attention. This paper focuses on how urban experiments are co-created with broader governance cultures in multiple governance levels, and what the implications of this co-creation are for urban transformation. We provide a theoretical background on the interrelations between governance cultures and urban experimentation, and the debate on urban experimentation within Science and Technology Studies, transition/innovation studies and urban studies to identify the main barriers for urban transformation. We, then, present our methodology consisting of the case study selection of the multi-level governance nexus State-Region-City in Stuttgart and Karlsruhe, our data collection with interviews and documents, and the analytical tool of storylines to capture the co-production of governance cultures and urban experiments. We continue with the analysis of the case study of automated driving experimentation with the concept of storylines. Our findings show that urban experiments are more likely to lead to urban transformation when the local public sector has a strong role in governance processes, and when experiments emerge through deliberation on daily urban problems and policy agendas. When governance processes are mainly led by state and industry actors who prioritize testing technologies as universal and scalable byproducts, it is less likely for urban experiments to lead to urban transformation. Finally, we discuss when urban experimentation advances technology per se and when it adds public value and advances sustainability, arguing for a co-existence of different kinds of urban experiments. We conclude with future research and policy implications

New Advances in Evaluating Urban Experimentation

Urban experimentation has emerged as a potential way forward in otherwise intractable problems, particularly sustainability and climate change. Be it as a stepping stone towards desirable socio-technical trajectories or as the concrete embodiment of utopian futures, urban experiments are more than traditional projects. Despite these inflated promises, it is unclear how to evaluate experimentation and appraise its outcomes. Without appropriate evaluation, it is hard to assess initiatives’ success or effectiveness and capture insights and learnings, e.g., to refine the design and conduct experiments