Fostering technological innovation is considered as an important element of policies towards sustainable
development. In the past 10 years, evolutionary policy approaches have been increasingly advocated.
For several reasons, they seem well equipped to underpin sustainable innovation policies. They focus on
dynamics of change and their drivers, they allow for a substantive perspective on technologies beyond
mere input¿output relations, taking into account trajectories and different characteristics of innovation,
and they are able to describe circumstances under which established technologies might persist even
whenthey are to some extent inferior to their newcompetitors (lock-in).However, the policy effectiveness
of evolutionary approaches in cases in which radical or systemic changes are involved is not yet proven. In
this paperwe assess the theoretical rationale, instrumental aspects and the coping with policy constraints
of three evolutionary policy approaches which have also been used in empirical studies: strategic niche
management, transition management and time strategies. Each approach has its strengths and specific
problems and all three have to be further developed and tested out but they hold promise for contributing
to non-incremental change with economic and environmental benefits, by shaping processes of variation,
selection and retention, with the outcomes feeding back into policy. Theymay also be used in other areas
in which innovation direction is important, for instance health care or food.JRC.J.3-Knowledge for Growt