Deep Transitions: Emergence, Acceleration, Stabilization and Directionality

Scaling up research-for-development innovations in food and agricultural systems

“…This scaling up trend is especially striking in the agriculture sector, where "well-intended [experts] are looking for new solutions to the 'great balancing act' (Searchinger, Hanson, and Ranganathan 2013) of feeding 9 billion, reducing environmental and climate harms, and distributing economic development gains more widely and fairly" (Hinrichs 2014, 144). There are questions about how these goals would be achieved considering the global footprint of agriculture on the earth's planetary boundaries (and impact on climate change) and social inequalities associated with accessing adequate and nutritious food, including the long-term marginalisation of small-scale food producers (Schot and Kanger 2018;IPES-Food 2016;IAASTD 2009).…”

“…However, this approach pays less attention to the interconnections of multiple socio-technological systems and how they coalesce to form common directionalities in (globalised) economies, polities, cultural frameworks and every day practices over time Kanger 2018, 1046). Indeed, the historical expansion of innovations in fossil fuels (oil or coal), synthetic materials and mechanisation in production have facilitated mass consumption of pervasively low-cost goods, particularly in the West (Schot and Kanger 2018). However, their impact on the earth's systems has been detrimental, as evident in the rapid depletion of natural resources, greenhouse gas emissions, pollution, and so on (Markard, Raven, and Truffer 2012).…”

Innovation management in a digital world

“…Niches shaping new technological paradigms may be expected to move through certain stages. These factors constitute a sequence of S-curves or waves, with the historical industrialisation as the First Deep Transition (see Schot and Kanger, 2018). All innovation systems, all economy systems worldwide have to cope with this transition.…”

A systemic perspective on socioeconomic transformation in the digital age

“…Our systemic perspective on technological change falls in line with, and is very much grounded in, a range of macroeconomic concepts that also treat technology as being embedded in a specific socioeconomic environment (see e.g. Dosi 1982, Freeman et al 1982, Perez 1983, Mokyr 1990, von Tunzelmann 1997, Lipsey et al 2005, Geels and Schot 2007, Schot and Kanger 2018. Different from them, we focus on measuring empirically how broad building blocks of the socioeconomic system and their interrelation drive a country's performance and its capacity for transformation.…”