Innovation

There is an ongoing discussion among innovation researcher about the need to go beyond the bias towards on firms, technology and markets, when defining innovation and to theorize about innovation in more general ways.

One of the present day leading researcher in the field, Koen Frenken, together with a colleague at Utrecht University, offers a valuable framework for defining innovation and to theorize about innovation in more general ways.

It is a framework, which “helps to theoretically distinguish minor and major innovations taking place within existing categories (breakthrough innovation) from innovations that redefine categories (disruptive innovation) from innovations that lead to the established of new categories (radical innovation).”

“The notion of radical innovation is an elusive one, and the terms ‘radical innovation’, ‘breakthrough innovation’, and ‘disruptive innovation’, and yet other labels, tend to be used interchangeably (Kovacs et al., 2019; Knüpling, 2022). We proposed a framework that may help to overcome this confusion by approaching radical innovation in a more general way using category theory. A particular useful theoretical notion is that of the 'categorical imperative' (Zuckerman, 1999, 2017) penalizing innovations that do not fit within established categories that people use to make sense of the world around them, and, in particular, to establish expectations and valuation of material artefacts and social practices.”

They define ….

“incremental innovation as an innovation that society readily categorizes and institutionalizes in an existing category and readily valuates the innovation positively for its minor improvements.”

“radical innovation as innovation that society categorizes and institutionalizes in a new category rather than within an existing category, and valuates the innovation positively for its novelty”

“disruptive innovation as an innovation that society eventually categorizes and institutionalizes in an existing category by stretching the boundaries of this category and eventually valuates the innovation positively for making an artefact or practice much more accessible”

“breakthrough innovation as an innovation that society readily categorizes and institutionalizes in an existing category and readily valuates the innovation positively for its major improvements”

[Source: Frenken, Koen, and Matthijs B Punt. ‘A New View on Radical Innovation’. In International Sustainability Transitions Conference 2023. Utrecht: SocArXiv, 2023. https://osf.io/6cr5t/download.]

“Today, innovation is spontaneously understood as technological innovation because of its contribution to economic “progress”. Yet for 2,500 years, innovation had nothing to do with economics in a positive sense. Innovation was pejorative and political. It was a contested idea in philosophy, religion, politics and social affairs. Innovation only got de-contested in the last century. … Innovation shifted from a vice to a virtue. Innovation became an instrument for achieving political and social goals.”

[quote from https://books.google.at/books?id=I4wcBgAAQBAJ] [Source: Godin, Benoît. Innovation Contested: The Idea of Innovation Over the Centuries. Routledge, 2015.]

The role of technology in innovation and innovation policy in the fundamental transitions in the production and consumption systems (PCS) and in provisioning systems (PVS), like energy systems, is changing. On the one side through the social dimension and increasing importance of elements of public services and basic human rights and on the other hand the role of digitalisation and increasingly cyber-physical character of socio-technical systems.

• Can technological development still be framed as the dominant driver of change? Or, are social innovation, institutional innovation, product/service innovation, organisational and process innovations all complementary for system transformation?
• The question to be addressed  is, what are the enabling factors to technological diffusion, generalisation, and system transition?

[Source: Kubeczko, K., 2022. Transformative Readiness - Unpacking the technological and non-technological aspects of sustainability transitions. Presented at the IST 2022.]

The OECD has implicitly long recognised that market ready innovation is not necessarily based on new technology, by extending the definition to include

• products,
• services,
• processes,
• organisations and
• marketing.

Arnulf Grubler, Keywan Riahi from IIASA and others describe technologies like PV and Lithium batteries as “granular”, in that they are taken up fast through steeper lerning curves, then larger scale solutions. They include granularity as one of the drivers in their “Scenario Narrative of Low Energy Demand” (LED)

“granularity, referring to the proliferation of small scale, low unit cost technologies enabling experimentation, rapid learning and equitable access”

They claim “rapid innovation, cost reductions and performance improvements from widespread diffusion of granular end-use and lowcarbon supply technologies requires sustained innovation policies aligned to credible efforts to stimulate market demand”

[Source: Grubler, A. et al. A low energy demand scenario for meeting the 1.5 °C target and sustainable development goals without negative emission technologies. Nat Energy 3, 515–527 (2018).]

The innovation perspective includes theories that focus on the application, dissemination and effects of innovation. It is dedicated to new topics (e.g. climate change and digitization) and examines the role of socio-technical innovations, i.e. technological and non-technological developments, towards a climate-friendly society (Joly, 2017; Schot & Steinmueller, 2018).

Structures in these approaches include, for example, laws, standards, infrastructure, governance structures, actor constellations (Edquist, 2011; Köhler et al., 2019), which are systematized along socio-technical regimes and landscape developments. The approaches primarily examine how innovations affect structures, but also how innovation systems enable innovations for sustainable development. Subsequently, the approaches also examine how innovations affect social and economic practice and the associated environmental influences (Avelino et al., 2017; Kivimaa et al., 2021; Köhler et al., 2019; Shove & Walker, 2014). The knowledge gained in this way serves to better understand the transition to climate-friendly living. The starting points of the theories in the innovation perspective are innovation theories and theories of technological change: Techno-economic paradigm, technological systems, radical and incremental innovation and also actor-network theory (Dosi et al., 1988; Freeman & Perez, 2000; Köhler et al ., 2019; Latour, 2019; Malerba & Orsenigo, 1995). They describe which actors develop innovations (entrepreneurship, applied research in large companies), how innovations prevail as new products, processes and services and often underline that “creative destruction” (Schumpeter, 1911; Smelser, 2005) leads to structural changes (especially of market structures dominated by monopolies).

In connection with today's societal challenges, there has been a shift in scientific discourse: away from an almost exclusive emphasis on economic goals towards more trend-setting, directional objectives in the sense of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (Daimer et al., 2012; Diercks et al., 2019 ). Current innovation theories go beyond economic and technological issues. They examine the role played by different actors, the extent to which social developments are important for innovations and, conversely, how innovations affect social and environmental aspects (Köhler et al., 2019). These theories can also be referred to as multilevel theories. They usually systematize structures along three levels (Geels & Kemp, 2007; Köhler et al., 2019): (1) Socio-technical regimes as the inner structures of the socio-technical systems of production and consumption, (2) Landscape as the structures in the economic, social and ecological environment and (3) Niches, within which new solutions can initially be developed experimentally without changing structural framework conditions.

Innovation has the potential – intentionally or unintentionally – to change price structures, market structures, infrastructures through to actor constellations, governance structures, organizational structures or entire socio-technical production and consumption systems. This perspective thus includes approaches to technological, entrepreneurial, organizational, product, process, marketing and system innovation as well as social innovation, environmental innovation, sustainability innovation and exnovation. Theories of exnovation (Arnold et al., 2015) are a special case because they focus less on creating something new and more on ending unsustainable solutions.

Shaping, in the context of the innovation perspective, means consciously bringing about change through innovations (Godin, 2015). It is about new solutions that lead to a changed social or economic practice of everyday actions. Shaping means changing the structural environment (e.g. regional planning, climate policy measures, etc.) or creating and supporting the development of socio-technical niches. It is argued that socio-technical or social innovations, mental models (such as visions of the future) (Grin et al., 2011; Schot & Steinmueller, 2018), legal frameworks and infrastructures (Bolton & Foxon, 2015), actor networks (Latour, 2019 ) and governance processes (Köhler et al., 2019) can be shaped.

[Source (own translation): A. Novy et al., “Kapitel 2: Perspektiven zur Analyse und Gestaltung von Strukturen für ein klimafreundliches Leben.,” in APCC Special Report: Strukturen für ein klimafreundliches Leben (APCC SR Climate Friedly Living) [Görg, C., V.Madner, A. Muhar, A. Novy, A. Posch, K. Steininger und E. Aigner (Hrsg.)]., Berlin/Heidelberg: Springer Spektrum, 2022. [Online]. Available: https://ssrn.com/abstract=42768462

alternative English source: E. Aigner et al., ‘Kapitel IV: Technical Summary’. In APCC Special Report: Strukturen Für Ein Klimafreundliches Leben (APCC SR Climate Friedly Living) [Görg, C., V. Madner, A. Muhar, A. Novy, A. Posch, K. Steininger Und E. Aigner (Hrsg.)]. Berlin/Heidelberg: Springer Spektrum, 2022. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4277689.]

“A mission-oriented innovation includes any new or improved technological, social and organisational solution (product, process or service) that aims to respond to one or several of the grand societal challenges (missions) and create public value to society (e.g., climate mitigation, clean oceans, sustainable economic growth and well-being etc.).”

https://oecd-opsi.org/work-areas/mission-oriented-innovation/

~~DISCUSSION|Discussion Section - PAGE OWNER: Klaus Kubeczko~~