Disrupting Innovation Driven by Governmental Regulatory Targeting, Not Slow
Guided Incremental Innovation Involving Incumbents is What is Needed to
Transform the Industrial State
Strategic Niche Management and Transition Management have been promoted as
useful avenues to pursue in order to achieve both specific product or process
changes and system transformation by focusing on technology development
through evolutionary and co-evolutionary processes, guided by government and
relevant stakeholders. However, these processes are acknowledged to require
decades to achieve their intended changes, a timeframe that is too long to
adequately address many of the environmental and social issues we are facing.
An approach that involves incumbents and does not consider targets that look
beyond reasonably foreseeable technology is likely to advance a model where
incumbents evolve rather than being replaced or displaced. Sustainable
development requires both disruptive technological and institutional changes,
the latter including stringent regulation, integration beyond coordination of
disparate goals, and changes in incentives to enable new voices to contribute
to integrated systems and solutions. This paper outlines options for a strong
governmental role in setting future sustainability goals and the pathways for
achieving them
