The power and complexity of innovation
Hello folks and welcome back to the end of another week. Don’t forget, it’s never too late to innovate and start afresh next week! Speaking of innovation… the theme of this week’s edition! (Yes, thank you, I thought that segue was particularly inspired too!) Also, while I wait for and process your feedback from the questionnaire, let me shake things up myself, and proceed a little differently. Instead of me talking a lot (admittedly, my favourite pastime), I will let the singers sing this time, save for a few words of introduction. Net result: double the number of articles!
To be clear: about innovation. ‘Cause that’s the theme of this week. In forme and fond.
Technology life-cycles in the energy sector - Technological characteristics and the role of deployment for innovation
Huenteler, Joern, Tobias S. Schmidt, Jan Ossenbrink, and Volker H. Hoffmann. 2016. Technological Forecasting & Social Change. 104: 102-121. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2015.09.022
It’s difficult but crucial to get some sense of how technological innovation over time might change our calculus of the impact of climate change and our efforts to mitigate its effects.
“The ability to predict the life-cycle patterns of technologies could enable improved managerial decisions, technology forecasting, and technology policymaking.” (104)
The authors take two of the most significant innovations of the recent decades – photovoltaic panels and wind turbines – and ask: what kind of life-cycle did these innovations have? They distinguish between product innovation (actually coming up with something new) and process innovation (refining they way new tech is manufactured). Their findings:
solar PV technology followed the life-cycle pattern of mass-produced goods […] with relatively simple product architecture and a large-scale production process: early product innovations were followed by a surge of process innovations, especially in solar cell production. Wind power systems, in contrast, more closely resembled the life-cycle of complex products and systems […[ with a complex product architecture and low-volume production: the focus of innovative activity shifted over time from the system architecture and core components to different sub-systems and components of the product, rather than from product to process innovations. (117)
If that was some hardcore innovation science, we expand outwards (from the core) to a series on consumer or citizen involvement in innovation trajectories. Let’s start in Tanzania.
Small-scale hydropower in Africa: Socio-technical designs for renewable energy in Tanzanian villages
Ahlborg, Helene, and Martin Sjöstedt. 2015. Energy Research & Social Science. 5: 20-33. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2014.12.017
When is NGO-led development a good thing? NGO-led rural electrification has often failed to deliver, whether on its promise of economically viable installations, knock-on development effects, or even just electricity provision over expected the life-time. These authors study a case that bucked the trend. How was it different?
The results may not seem surprising (even to the authors):
The case of Mawengi lends support to other case studies and comparisons holding factors such as community ownership, capacity development, and stakeholder engagement as crucial success factors. In addition, the case study shows the importance of coupling energy programs with complementary activities such as, for example, education and agricultural processing. (32)
However, it is actually worthwhile diving in for the rich detail, for anyone looking for inspiration for community involvement.
Smart grids and households: how are household consumers represented in experimental projects?
Hansen, Meiken, and Mads Borup. 2018. Technology Analysis & Strategic Management. 30 (3): 255-267. https://doi.org/10.1080/09537325.2017.1307955
We jump from one kind of local participation to another. As a system innovator, how do you get these pesky people involved that ultimately need to adopt your grand inventions? (Or more prosaically: how do you get “households [to change their] energy consumption to become more flexible according to the needs of the smart grid”? [260]). Well, beknown only to clever social theorists, you develop a script! Hansen and Borup identify three when it comes to flexible consumption.
(1) Economic incentives – consumers as economic, rational entities
(2) Automation – automatic steering and control of household energy units
(3) Information/visualisation – energy information and consumer feedback as central factors (260)
While all smart grid project they reviewed showed evidence of at least one of these kinds of ideas of what determines how users relate to the grid, interestingly, they didn’t necessarily agree on what any of them meant. As a result, the authors’ advice for the energy engineers of tomorrow is be more systematic in mapping out how they think consumers react to new propositions (so you can also test it properly).
Benefits and risks of smart home technologies
Wilson, Charlie, Tom Hargreaves, and Richard Hauxwell-Baldwin. 2017. Energy Policy. 103: 72-83. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.enpol.2016.12.047
These kinds of scripts are commonly accepted (by wise social scientists) as exceedingly narrow. So, let’s hear it from the consumers themselves (or at least the imprint they leave in national UK surveys). Turns out they like the idea of smart (energy) tech in their home. However, they have questions. In particular, they worry about:
“potential risks in the increasing dependence of domestic life on systems of technology provision (77% agree or strongly agree) and electricity networks (63%)” (76).
But they are also constructive! Here are some solutions they are willing to accept:
SHTs should be designed to be reliable, easy to use, controllable, and easy to over-ride. The market applications of SHTs should guarantee privacy, confidentiality, and secure data storage. SHTs should also be provided by credible companies with resources to provide performance warranties. (76)
Coming back to the poorly developed and narrow script of energy system engineers: the marketing materials Wilson et al analysed do not align with these worries and with these solutions. Work to do!
Combining the technological innovation systems framework with the entrepreneurs’ perspective on innovation
Planko, Julia, Jacqueline Cramer, Marko P. Hekkert, and Maryse M.H. Chappin. 2017. Technology Analysis & Strategic Management. 29 (6): 614-625. https://doi.org/10.1080/09537325.2016.1220515
Speaking of work, let’s move from consumers to entrepreneurs. They are often credited by transition scientists as being important agents who can push new innovations into the mainstream. Planko et al take it one step further by calling attention to their capacity as market makers. You see, in an often-used theoretical framework, Technological Innovation Systems, policy makers and public institutions are often invoked as those ‘making’ the market through regulation. Entrepreneurs surely agree:
You need the government as a partner for regulations but not for tax regimes, subsidies, loans or such like. The market should do that. But the government could help with regulation’ [Entrepreneur 7] (620)
But wait! “[M]arket formation processes can also be carried out by entrepreneurs” (622)! In their own words:
‘We need to incentivize the customers because if they don’t want to participate in this new energy system, it is not going to happen’. […] ‘The biggest problem is not so much technical, but rather how to get the customers and the end users willing and active in this new energy system’ [Entrepreneur 11].
(And we’re back to scripts…)
Building a green economy? Sustainability transitions in the UK building sector
Gibbs, David, and Kirstie O’Neill. 2015. Geoforum. 59: 133-141. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2014.12.004
Sticking with this interaction by regulators and entrepreneurs, a more sobering tale comes from Gibbs and O’Neill. Innovation often gets watered down to the measures that can be easily subsumed into existing practices, or without modifying current institutions. Take the authors’ example of the Code for Sustainable Homes in the UK. It set standards but didn’t specify tools to meet them “in an attempt to encourage innovative responses and cost-effective solutions” (135). (Markets to the rescue, yeah!) Unfortunately, it
“effectively encouraged the adoption of an ecological modernisation or ‘eco-technic’ approach with an emphasis on technological, rather than holistic, solutions”,
allowing a “business-as-usual” approach to persist (139f.). Innovation is hard y’all.
Rethinking sociotechnical transitions and green entrepreneurship: The potential for transformative change in the green building sector
Gibbs, David, and Kirstie O'Neill. 2014. Environment and Planning A. 46: 1088-1107. https://doi.org/10.1068/a46259
Brian White's bale house (http://www.strawbalehouse.co.uk)
The same authors (different article) have more sobering words. The way the “niche” has been conceived in the energy social sciences as crucial to the adoption of sustainable innovations has been overly simplistic, at least judged by ‘green’ entrepreneurs in the construction sector. The article examines the literature’s claims about niche entrepreneurs as “system builders” (turns out, some don’t want to build no bridges), about niches as “protected spaces” (it’s often unclear and controversial what counts as ‘green building’, whereas other times, people are having a hard time preventing too much uptake from the mainstream) and about how transitions from niche to mainstream happen (it’s messy y’all).
The green economy agenda: business as usual or transformational discourse
Ferguson, Peter. 2015. Environmental Politics. 24 (1): 17-37. https://doi.org/10.1080/09644016.2014.919748
To end on an even more sobering note, let’s go back the question in the first article – what really is the role of innovation in mitigating climate change? “[G]ains in resource efficiency are almost always absorbed by increases in resource consumption”, while the so-called “‘rebound effect’ can negate as much as 60–100% of energy savings” (22). In other words, can innovation “ever compensate for the ecological effects of 3% growth per annum” (id)?
What we need in other words is not just innovation but zero-growth economics! Unfortunately, that kind of language tends not to fly very well with anyone besides “seventies hippies movements” (in Gibbs & O’Neill 2014). So, we need to, er, do some discursive innovating! (I swear, this article fits in this edition!) A language for the “green economy” away from “limits to growth” and towards “disarticulating itself from conventional economic growth” (30).
“For example, green economy can be articulated in binary opposition to brown or dirty economy. This works to delegitimise conventional growth because this is clearly comparatively deficient vis-à-vis green growth/economy.” (30)
So long and thanks for all the fish!
Wishing you lots of inspiration over the weekend, re-stock on some of those creative juices! If you have any questions, suggestions, requests, hit that reply button.