Strategic niche management and sustainable innovation journeys: theory, findings, research agenda, and policy

Abstract

This article discusses empirical findings and conceptual elaborations of the last 10 years in strategic niche management research (SNM). The SNM approach suggests that sustainable innovation journeys can be facilitated by creating technological niches, i.e. protected spaces that allow the experimentation with the co-evolution of technology, user practices, and regulatory structures. The assumption was that if such niches were constructed appropriately, they would act as building blocks for broader societal changes towards sustainable development. The article shows how concepts and ideas have evolved over time and new complexities were introduced. Research focused on the role of various niche-internal processes such as learning, networking, visioning and the relationship between local projects and global rule sets that guide actor behaviour. The empirical findings showed that the analysis of these niche-internal dimensions needed to be complemented with attention to niche external processes. In this respect, the multi-level perspective proved useful for contextualising SNM. This contextualisation led to modifications in claims about the dynamics of sustainable innovation journeys. Niches are to be perceived as crucial for bringing about regime shifts, but they cannot do this on their own. Linkages with ongoing external processes are also important. Although substantial insights have been gained, the SNM approach is still an unfinished research programme. We identify various promising research directions, as well as policy implications.

Keywords:

• niche
• quasi-evolution
• multi-level perspective
• sustainability
• innovation policy

Acknowledgements

We have had the great fortune to discuss this article with a wide range of scholars, many heavily involved themselves in SNM and transition research and therefore cited in the text. We thank them for their constructive criticism. We gratefully acknowledge the support of the Dutch Knowledge Network on System Innovation and Transitions towards Sustainable Development (KSI).

Notes

Van de Belt and Rip (1984) did not address sustainable development and regime change, but nurturing, survival and robustness. They introduced SNM as a combination of protection against too harsh selection at an early stage and subsequent controlled exposure to selection pressures.

For a nice overview, see Williams and Edge (1996).

For this historical analysis, see Schot (2003).

See Rip and Kemp (1998) for the idea of modulating ongoing interactions; for the notion of steering from within, see Rip (2006). Kemp developed the idea of modulating ongoing dynamics into an evolutionary policy approach; see Nill and Kemp (2008, forthcoming).

When Rip (1992, 1995) introduced the niche concept, he used the example of the R&D programme on the Stirling engine inside the Philips Company. His basic point was not that niches are internal to firms, however, but that radical novelties initially have low legitimacy and require protection and nurturing to survive (e.g. dedicated product development programmes). See also Van den Belt and Rip (1987). Schot, Hoogma, and Elzen (1994), expanded the idea and introduced the distinction between technological and market niche, and proposed to use the notion of technological niche to refer to societal experiments with new technologies outside the laboratory in a user context.

On this point, see Verheul and Vergragt (1995).

On the role of expectations, see Brown and Michael (2003); see also Van Lente (1993).

For an overview of various conceptualisations of niches in radical change see Schot and Geels (2007).

This division in three processes has been much discussed, leading to various proposals. For example, Hoogma et al. (2002) propose to distinguish two main processes; learning processes and institutional embedding, with further subdivisions (pp. 28–29).

In 1998, the European Union funded an SNM research project within the ‘Environment and Climate’ RTD programme. Through this project, scholars in several countries worked on SNM. They investigated fourteen innovative transport projects in different European cities (ranging from electric vehicles to car sharing schemes). This collaborative project resulted in a work book for practitioners on how to do SNM (Weber et al. 1999), and an academic book (Hoogma et al. 2002).

The following articles explicitly applied the SNM perspective: Brown et al. (2004), Ieromonachou, Potter, and Enoch (2004), Truffer, Metzner, and Hoogma (2004), Kivisaari, Lovio, and Väyrynen (2004), Harborne, Hendry, and Brown (2007), Hendry (2007), Van Eijck and Romijn (2008) and Hegger et al. (2007). Two other PhD theses that discuss SNM are Lane (2002) and Adey (2007). Finally SNM is central to Wiskerke and Van der Ploeg (2002).

TM partly draws on SNM. Kemp has been the intermediary between the two approaches. Another approach that highlights the role of visions is backcasting (see Quist 2007). For a reflection on SNM and TM, see Loorbach and Van Raak (2007).

This is the theme of a thesis under preparation by Ulmanen. For first results see Ulmanen, Raven and Verbong (2007).

For results published in English, see Schot (1998) and Van Driel and Schot (2005).

For a further discussion on the nature of this macro-level, see Van Driel and Schot (2005) and Geels and Schot (2007).

For multi-regime interaction in the multi-level perspective, see Geels (2007).

Policies induced by Transition management encounter a similar problem, see Kemp, Rotmans, and Loorbach (2007).

Two other books have been produced for practitioners but with less direct involvement of them (Kemp and Van den Bosch 2006; Weber et al. 1999). Insights of the later working book are elaborated in Weber and Dorba (1999). More information on www.transitiepraktijk.nl and www.ksinetwork.nl