Technological transitions

Technological innovations have occurred throughout history and rapidly increased over the modern age. New technologies are developed and co-exist with the old before supplanting them. Transport offers several examples; from sailing to steam ships to automobiles replacing horse-based transportation. Technological transitions (TT) describe how these technological innovations occur and are incorporated into society. Alongside the technological developments TT considers wider societal changes such as “user practices, regulation, industrial networks (supply, production, distribution), infrastructure, and symbolic meaning or culture”. For a technology to have use, it must be linked to social structures human agency and organisations to fulfil a specific need. Hughes refers to the ‘seamless web’ where physical artefacts, organisations, scientific communities, and social practices combine. A technological system includes technical and non-technical aspects, and it a major shift in the socio-technical configurations (involving at least one new technology) is when a technological transition occurs. Technological innovations have occurred throughout history and rapidly increased over the modern age. New technologies are developed and co-exist with the old before supplanting them. Transport offers several examples; from sailing to steam ships to automobiles replacing horse-based transportation. Technological transitions (TT) describe how these technological innovations occur and are incorporated into society. Alongside the technological developments TT considers wider societal changes such as “user practices, regulation, industrial networks (supply, production, distribution), infrastructure, and symbolic meaning or culture”. For a technology to have use, it must be linked to social structures human agency and organisations to fulfil a specific need. Hughes refers to the ‘seamless web’ where physical artefacts, organisations, scientific communities, and social practices combine. A technological system includes technical and non-technical aspects, and it a major shift in the socio-technical configurations (involving at least one new technology) is when a technological transition occurs. Work on technological transitions draws on a number of fields including history of science, technology studies, and evolutionary economics. The focus of evolutionary economics is on economic change, but as a driver of this technological change has been considered in the literature. Joseph Schumpeter, in his classic Theory of Economic Development placed the emphasis on non-economic forces as the driver for growth. The human actor, the entrepreneur is seen as the cause of economic development which occurs as a cyclical process. Schumpeter proposed that radical innovations were the catalyst for Kondratiev cycles. The Russian economist Kondratiev proposed that economic growth operated in boom and bust cycles of approximately 50 year periods. These cycles were characterised by periods of expansion, stagnation and recession. The period of expansion is associated with the introduction of a new technology, e.g. steam power or the microprocessor. At the time of publication, Kondratiev had considered that two cycles had occurred in the nineteenth century and third was beginning at the turn of the twentieth. Modern writers, such as Freeman and Perez outlined five cycles in the modern age: Freeman and Perez proposed that each cycle consists of pervasive technologies, their production and economic structures that support them. Termed ‘techno-economic paradigms’, they suggest that the shift from one paradigm to another is the result of emergent new technologies. Following the recent economic crisis, authors such as Moody and Nogrady have suggested that a new cycle is emerging from the old, centred on the use of sustainable technologies in a resource depleted world. Thomas Kuhn described how a paradigm shift is a wholesale shift in the basic understanding of a scientific theory. Examples in science include the change of thought from miasma to germ theory as a cause of disease. Building on this work, Giovanni Dosi developed the concept of ’technical paradigms’ and ‘technological trajectories’. In considering how engineers work, the technical paradigm is an outlook on the technological problem, a definition of what the problems and solutions are. It charts the idea of specific progress. By identifying the problems to be solved the paradigm exerts an influence on technological change. The pattern of problem solving activity and the direction of progress is the technological trajectory. In similar fashion, Nelson and Winter (,)defined the concept of the ‘technological regime’ which directs technological change through the beliefs of engineers of what problems to solve. The work of the actors and organisations is the result of organisational and cognitive routines which determines search behaviour. This places boundaries and also trajectories (direction) to those boundaries. Recently, the scope of academic sustainability discourse and investigative focus has broadened beyond the study of technological products, innovations and subsequent transitions . Much of the literature now examines technological artefacts and innovations through a wider scope of socio-technical systems . It has been argued that this contemporary framework has emerged in response to both an increased understanding of the urgency of environmental problems and the recognition that more substantiative transitions are required across multiple interdependent systems to mitigate impacts . The technological transitions framework does acknowledge the co-evolution and mutual unfolding of societal change alongside technological innovation. However, the socio-technical transitions framework considers a more encompassing view of the interdependent links that technology maintains with systems that both generate the need for new innovations and ultimately produce and maintain them (. More specifically, the systems that comprise the socio-technical paradigm include technology, supply networks, infrastructure, maintenance networks, regulation, cultural meaning as well as user practices and markets . As such, socio-technical transitions can be defined as the multi-dimensional shift from one socio-technical system to another involving changes in both technological and social systems that are intrinsically linked in a feedback loop . Generally speaking, socio-technical transitions are a slow process as technological innovation tends to occur incrementally along fixed trajectories due to the rigidity of economic, social, cultural, infrastructural and regulative norms . This is referred to as path dependency, creating technological ‘lock-ins’ which prevent innovation that disrupts the status quo . Therefore, the breakthrough and dissemination of technological innovations is dependent on more than their respective benefits, providing an insight into the complexity of the forces and multiple dimensions at play. The multi-level perspective (MLP) is an analytical tool that attempts to deal with this complexity and resistance to change. Focussing on the dynamics of wider transitionary developments as opposed to discrete technological innovations, the MLP concerns itself with socio-technical system transformations, particularly with transitions towards sustainability and resilience . As the name implies, the MLP posits three analytical and heuristic levels on which processes interact and align to result in socio-technical system transformations; landscape (macro-level), regimes (meso-level) and niches (micro-level) . Firstly, the regime level represents the current structures and practices characterised by dominant rules, institutions and technologies that are self-reinforcing . The socio-technical regime is dynamically stable in the sense that innovation still transpires albeit incrementally and along a predictable trajectory . This makes the regime ‘locked-in’ and resistant to both technological and social transitions . Secondly, the landscape level is defined as the exogenous, broader contextual developments in deep-seated cultural patterns, macro-economics, macro-politics and spatial structures, potentially arising from shocks associated with wars, economic crisis, natural disaster and political upheaval . Additionally, landscapes are beyond the direct influence of actors, yet stimulate and exert pressure on them at the regime and niche levels. Finally, the niche is defined as the “locus for radical innovations” where dedicated actors nurture the development of technological novelties . Incubated from market and regulation influences, the niche fosters innovations that differ fundamentally from the prevailing regime and usually require landscape developments that open windows of opportunity in at the regime level . Therefore, the MLP attributes socio-technical transitions to the interaction of stabilising forces at the regime level with destabilising forces from both the landscape and niche levels .