Strategies for socio-technical innovation

Engaged actors’ creativity, experimentation and learning influences, but does not determine the gradual development and shaping of socio-technical systems. This section looks at how social actors deliberately create change and how such activities can be analyzed. Activities that contribute to system innovation are parts of long-term processes, consisting of involved individual and collective actions. The outcomes are uncertain and influenced by a large number of factors. Efforts for system innovation can be seen as a way of trying to stimulate and influence the complex processes of co-evolution of the social and the technical for promotion of sustainable socio-technical systems.

Some specific strategies for system innovation are based on the transitions literature, of which strategic niche management has received the most attention (Schot et al. 1994, Hoogma et al. 2002, Raven 2005). These include implementation of practical projects (socio-technical experiments). The strategies aim to facilitate learning processes on social and technological dimensions in order to create radical changes (transitions), and to deal with unfolding transitions’ uncertainty, governance, and meaning of sustainability. Grassroots innovation is another kind of experimental activity that contributes to socio-technical change, as will be explained below. Before exploring specific strategies for system innovation, the next section discusses uncertainties inherent in innovation processes due to the open and unpredictable nature of human societies.

2.2.1. Unintended, unexpected outcomes of efforts for change

Purposeful system innovation is needed because of the lack of environmental and social sustainability of current systems for provision of electricity and other societal systems. It is also being done by a large number of actors. However, as much as actors want to shape change, the outcomes of strategies for technological change cannot be fully known during the planning process. The perspective of “social shaping of technology” acknowledges the role of intention, interest and responsibility in innovation, while at the same time emphasizing the emergent and unpredictable nature of socio-technical change (Russell and Williams 2002). It represents a critique of linear models of innovation, for example sequential stages like

“invention, development, design, testing, refinement, implementation and diffusion” (Russell and Williams 2002, p. 55). Rather, innovation processes have been shown to be overlapping, interactive, and non-linear (Stirling 2008). Technologies are produced and used in a particular social context by a variety of social actors, influenced by a diversity of social situations and structures. Technologies have widely varying characteristics, strongly affected by interdependencies and feedback between elements of systems they constitute.

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Even though there is always choice involved in socio-technical change, technological and social changes “are never fully planned and predicted; they are subject to frequent setbacks and failures and emerge in the course of local struggles to produce a working technology and accommodate it in its use setting” (Russell and Williams 2002, p. 51).

Therefore, this research looks at the differences between the intended socio-technical designs for the village infrastructures and the ways they could come to work in practice and change over months and years.

Agency in socio-technical change has to be seen in light of this complexity. The multi-level perspective mentioned above acknowledges the dynamic interaction between structure and agency in socio-technical change processes, as mentioned. These processes involve multiple actors, and display co-evolutionary and emergent dynamics that proceed despite various forms of path-dependency and lock-in. Therefore, governance of such processes, to the extent it is possible, must necessarily take an adaptive and reflexive form (Hoogma et al.

2002, Kemp et al. 2005, Shove and Walker 2010).

The kinds of actors involved in socio-technical innovation include civil society, government, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), companies, knowledge institutes, and consultants (Wieczorek and Hekkert 2012). These actors can play a variety of roles, and their interests stem from environmental concerns, business interests, practical users’ interests, research interests and other motivational factors. The engagement of different actors is also influenced by changing needs, values and debates in wider civil society, changing livelihoods and other developments at the socio-technical landscape level (Smith et al. 2005, Smith 2007, Späth and Rohracher 2012).

The challenge for strategic agents is to make transition dynamics and its associated political dynamics reinforce each other sufficiently, in order to gradually tilt the balance of power and legitimacy between incumbent and sustainable practices. This is a diffuse, distributed process that may lead to convergence through common ideas and visions or through the gradual, self-reinforcing structuring of practices. The power embodied in the regimes will privilege particular practices over others (Grin et al. 2011). For instance, political and economic actors and interests may be entangled (Meadowcroft 2011). The following sections consider various ways of promoting radical socio-technical change in the midst of the uncertainty, unpredictability and dynamic interactions mentioned above.

2.2.2. Strategic niche management and processes of niche emergence

Strategic niche management is both a strategy suggestion and an analytical framework related to the multi-level perspective. As a strategy it suggests ways of governing the creation of protective spaces – niches – for socio-technical experimentation and system innovation. As an analytical framework it provides concepts for analyzing processes of niche development and interaction between niches and regimes, which can inform practice on how niches can be strengthened (Raven 2005).

The goal of strategic niche management is to actively create and manage technology niches for radical innovations that can lead society towards transitions to sustainability (Schot et al. 1994, Rip and Kemp 1998, Hoogma et al. 2002, Raven 2005). Recognizing that regime

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shifts cannot be managed, only modulated, policies of strategic niche management have been suggested to be dynamic, reflexive and open-ended, by observing and modulating the direction of ongoing processes of co-evolution and the directions of search for sustainable solutions (Hoogma et al. 2002, Brown et al. 2003, Kemp et al. 2005). Learning and adaptation are central, through probe and learn strategies, not only for those who engage in practical experimentation, but also for policy makers and other relevant actors. Outcomes of socio-technical experiments are seen as important for fine-tuning policies, and niche management policies are seen as an important supplement to experiments. Such policies include proper governmental regulation and creative application of tax, subsidies and regulatory instruments.

Formation of actor cooperation such as public-private partnerships in the implementation, financing and operation of technology projects is promoted (Schot et al. 1994, Hoogma et al.

2002, Kemp et al. 2005, Smith et al. 2014). Interactions and conflicts between new, emerging systems and the established and dominating socio-technical regimes must be dealt with (Raven 2005).

Niche theory and the multi-level perspective in general views socio-technical experimentation in niches as a form of variation and selection of innovations, based on concepts from evolutionary economics. Change is based on the continuous creation of new ideas, technologies, and social arrangements. Some of these variations will survive and grow because they are selected by their surroundings – the selection environment (Brown et al.

2003, Smith and Raven 2012). The selection environment is constituted by the social context – markets, policies, ideas, interests, users’ practices, symbolic meaning, and other elements related to dominating regimes. The variation and selection is called quasi-evolutionary because the selection environment is partly known and anticipated by those who generate the variations, and they might also attempt to change the selection environment. Only a small fraction of experiments (variations) likely succeed (selection). Accordingly, only a few of the ways of organizing solar power supply that have been developed and tried out are likely to be part of future regimes for energy supply. For example, after many attempts to make community level solar systems work, it might be seen that simpler, large scale, grid connected solar systems become the norm, perhaps in combination with private ownership of solar systems.

Three kinds of processes are seen as important in “nurturing” socio-technical innovation in niches: managing expectations, building social networks, and learning (Kemp et al. 1998, Raven 2005). Firstly, various actors’ expectations to what a technological niche can offer society for the future are important for the ways in which they choose to involve themselves in relation to the niche. Expectations, for example to the future importance of solar technology, depend on how a niche is made to look by niche actors, and whether the niche lives up to the promises it makes about performance and effectiveness of societal functions, for instance reliable and affordable electricity supply. To support the development of niche innovation, expectations should ideally be widely shared, specific, and credible (Seyfang and Haxeltine 2012). Expectations become credible if they are substantiated by many projects (Schot and Geels 2008, Smith et al. 2014). Secondly, network building is important for niche formation and learning. Networks supporting emerging niche technologies should include a diversity of actors so that these can bring in resources from

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their various organizations. Thirdly, learning processes should be created on a broad range of social and technological aspects and include second order learning, which is explained below (Kemp et al. 1998, Schot and Geels 2008, Seyfang and Haxeltine 2012, Smith et al. 2014).

The learning processes are the most important and most comprehensive of these three, as will be explained further.

The concepts of shielding and empowering the niche have been suggested as additions to these three concepts of nurturing (Smith and Raven 2012). Shielding refers to the processes of creating protective space, reducing the “selection pressure” from the regime.

Shielding may be created by active introduction of innovation-specific public or private interventions, or pre-existing situations like market niches, where there are few other alternatives available. An example of the latter is geographical areas outside the reach of centralized electricity grids where solar PV technology has met less competition than in areas with grid electricity available. The protective spaces allow the niche innovations to be nurtured and further developed (Smith and Raven 2012). In their analysis of the niche spaces for solar photovoltaic electricity in the UK, Smith et al. (2014) suggest that both discursive and material activities play a role in negotiation and compromises involved in creation of spaces for sustainable innovation. This includes a collective process of developing appealing narratives about the technological performance and opportunities for the future (Smith 2007, Smith et al. 2014).

Empowering takes two forms (Smith and Raven 2012). The first form of empowerment makes the niche innovation, such as solar PV technology, competitive under existing selection environments. An example of such empowerment is the rapid reductions in prices of solar PV modules during the recent years, improved production processes, economies of scale, and learning in the installation of the solar PV systems, and also improved solar PV module designs (Smith et al. 2014). This is called “fit and conform” to the selection environment. The second form of empowerment reforms regime elements (the selection environment) to become more favourable to the niche innovations. This is a result of niche actors’ lobbying in “the wider social world” in contrast with inward oriented accumulation of technology across networks of projects (Smith and Raven 2012). One example is the ways in which solar PV advocates have been able to influence policies, for instance the German implementation of the feed-in tariff. This is referred to “stretching and transforming” the regime/selection environment. The first form works on the “content of innovation”, and the second on the “context of innovation” (Smith et al. 2014).

This dissertation is not a typical niche analysis, although it considers strategic efforts within niches and their outcomes. Nevertheless, the cases analyzed here show examples of various niche processes, and demonstrate ways in which they can be stimulated. Specifically, the cases show examples of vigorous processes of learning and socio-technical innovation at the project level and beyond, and goes in detail on which activity “ingredients” are important for such learning, including the role of transfer of knowledge between projects in different countries. The various concepts for niche analysis will be referred to when relevant examples are described, but they will not represent the main analytical framework.

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2.3. Which factors facilitate learning and innovation in