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abstract
In response to complex and pressing environmental and social problems, sustainability innovations that have the potential to contribute to long-term socio-ecological transformations, have become increasingly important. However, these innovations seem to differ distinctively from recognized technological and economic forms of innovation by their formation and scaling processes, actor constellations, and the complexity of knowledge combination. Due to cognitive and institutional diversity in the development of sustainability innovation, combining knowledge bases transnationally is considerably challenging. This article illustrates such a case of knowledge bases combination by a comparative institutional analysis and innovation biographies of German-Chinese innovation projects in the green building sector. To grasp the largely underexplored dynamics of territorial and relational geographies in transnational sustainability innovation, this article places micro-dynamics and their institutional foundation center stage. Conceptually, recent evolutionary institutional geography approaches and knowledge-based theories are linked with the aim of contributing to both the geography of sustainability transitions and the ongoing debate in evolutionary economic geography. Thereby a deeper exploration of path dynamics and a more profound integration of agency and institutional changes is made possible.
Acknowledgments
The research has received support from the ASLinn project (Anchorage, Sustainability and Localization of Innovation), which is gratefully acknowledged. The author would like to thank Frederik Lindner and Julian Schwabe for their excellent research assistance in Germany and China. The paper benefited from the discussion with colleagues at the workshop “Special Issue of Economic Geography: Combinatorial Knowledge Bases, Regional Innovation and Development Dynamics”, CIRCLE, Lund, May 13th –14th, 2014. The author would like to thank Björn Asheim, Markus Grillitsch and Michaela Trippl for suggestions and comments. The detailed and constructive comments of the three anonymous reviewers, and from James T. Murphy, the editor of Economic Geography are gratefully acknowledged. The usual disclaimers apply.
Notes
1 Empirical results are based on the international research project ASLINN (Anchorage, Sustainability and Localization of Innovation), which focusses on sustainable innovation processes (Kebir et al. Citation2017).
2 The issue of sustainability has only recently started to emerge as a point of focus of China’s government. With the eleventh five-year plan in 2006, China put sustainability on the national agenda (Sadeler Citation2011).