Deep transitions: Emergence, acceleration, stabilization and directionality
By Johan Schot, Laur Kanger. Research Policy, 2018
437 citations recorded by the source corpus.
The unfolding of industrial modernity has led to high levels of wealth and welfare in the Western world but also to increasing global ecological degradation and social inequality. The routine mode of operation of a wide range of socio-technical systems, forming the material backbone of contemporary societies, has substantially contributed to these outcomes. This paper proposes that all these systems can be seen as a surface expression of fundamental meta-rules that for the past 250 years have driven the evolution of these systems and system innovation towards particular directions, thereby constituting the First Deep Transition. To meet the accumulated social and ecological challenges would therefore require a radical change not only in socio-technical systems but also in meta-rules underlying their functioning – the Second Deep Transition. This paper develops a new theoretical framework aiming to explain the emergence, acceleration, stabilization and directionality of Deep Transitions. It does so through the synthesis of three strands of literature: individual socio-technical systems, interconnected systems and industrialization-related macro-trends.
Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Management Science and Operations Research
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/9773be952c7b0e588dabc6c68769edb994ee2979
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Citations in the corpus
- Dealing with the game-changing technologies of Agriculture 4.0: How do we manage diversity and responsibility in food system transition pathways? (2020, neutral): “Also, it remains unclear how these contribute to shaping certain transition pathways towards sustainability and either underpin current technological and economic paradigms or foster ‘deep transitions’ (Pigford et al., 2018; Schot and Kanger, 2018; Schot and Steinmueller, 2018).”
- Sustainability transitions in developing countries: Major insights and their implications for research and policy (2017, background): “It builds on the argument that the interconnected, complex and global character of current challenges such as climate change or growing social inequalities, requires a radical change in the basic systems providing societal needs for energy, water or shelter (Schot and Kanger, 2016).”
- Three frames for innovation policy: R&D, systems of innovation and transformative change (2018, background): “The required systems-wide transformation might be called a Second Deep Transition (Schot, 2016; Schot and Kanger, 2018; Kanger and Schot, 2018).”