Allowing adoption of innovation and making a contribution to sustainability

Many public and private parties wish to make a contribution to a more sustainable society by setting up all kinds of cool projects, implementing innovative technologies and systems. However setting up and managing an innovative project may prove very complex. At the one hand guaranteeing financial viability and at the same time ensuring to contribute to sustainable development and making a real lasting impact may prove a challenge.

In order for sustainable innovation projects to be successful there are some prerequisites. First of all it is important to have an understanding of how the innovation will fit in conventional systems, models and institutions.  An overview of the project in comparison to conventional technologies, markets and believes will indicate the opportunities and barriers the innovation may encounter.

A simple example comes from our experience in Argentina. The project resolved around the building of a school completely relying on its own renewable energy supply. Furthermore the building was based on bioclimatic architecture. At first renewable energy, like solar panels, seemed to face a no-go market in Argentina because of the heavily subsidized fossil fuels. However in the relative distant rural area where the school was being build the majority of people live on big farms without grid-connection. People depend on big fossil fuel fired generator for their energy supply. Due to the noise and smell of these generators and the annoying time consuming effort of getting fuel from the nearest town, there is actually an opportunity for solar panels in these areas. The school will well serve as an demonstration project for solar panels in these distant areas.  

The bio-climatic building proposed for the school may prove more difficult to be adopted. The conventional contractors are not yet familiar with the technology, there are no proper certification systems that suit the Argentinean market, there are no government incentives for more sustainable building by requiring certain standards, and people may still be reluctant towards adopting this way of building since they are not familiar with it.

However there is always need for entrepreneurial champions willing to invest in sustainable alternatives and first movers willing to adopt them. Wider adoption of innovations is usually a gradual process and as a project manager you will face many barriers on your road to achieving your sustainability goals.

There are some factors to be taken into account by projectmanagers that can improve the possibility for innovations to be adopted and cause wider change. First of all it is important to have a shared project vision, mission and objectives. It is very important to align expectations between the involved stakeholders to provide guidance. But also beyond the project there may be experiments and projects related to similar innovations that can be learned from by sharing expectations with stakeholders from these projects and organizing into networks to share lessons between projects.   

Another key issue for innovation projects is to generate user acceptance. Involving users in an early phase, being transparent and allowing for feedback contributes to users trust, both trust in the project developers and in the technology. The trust generated by proper user involvement and an open attitude may prove crucial for the acceptance and adoption of the technology.

To allow for adaptation in status quo systems and institutions it is important to involve influential persons from within these status quo systems and institutions. Involving and informing already interested first movers from industry takes away skepticism. If these people are influential within their organizations they may contributes to wider acceptance and enthusiasm for the innovation. This may then lead to further adoption, investments, or development of the innovations. The same accounts for influential policy-makers that may prove valuable to lobby for adaptations in the policy realm and respected public persons, media channels and ambassadors may prove important to gain broader societal acceptance.

VERDUR assists projectmanagers in understanding the opportunities and barriers for innovation projects in their context of implementation by making comparative analysis between projects and status quo institutions. Furthermore VERDUR gives recommendations to projectmanagers regarding their network, the sharing of expectations and the organization of learning processes.  

Science and technology for development ‘The need for unique pathways towards development’

This blog is about that there is a need for allowing multiple pathways for technological change in order to develop and not only the ‘Western’ pathway that includes industrialization. This is not an attempt to downgrade the importance of western technology but it should not guide their development as being the only pathway to development. This eventually will lead to an increasing pressure on earth’s resources. 

Of course we cannot force developing countries not to industrialize or to use unsustainable cheap technologies that western countries use (or have been using). However there is a need to stimulate more pathways to development that are sustainable so that there is no necessity to follow unsustainable western practices. Increasing concerns about pollution and the future availability of human needs (energy, food, water and health) stress the importance of technologies that are designed to cope with this. Designing these technologies can benefit from both indigenous as well as scientific knowledge. Over time indigenous knowledge co-evolved with the environment. This evolved knowledge is embedded in local culture and can therefore provide valuable information as input for sustainable (local) innovations. However, innovations related to sustainability and poverty reduction are not (yet) appreciated by the market. Therefore besides focusing on economic growth there is a need for appreciation of innovations towards societal goals. This calls for a redefinition of innovation by including contribution to poverty alleviation and/or environmental sustainability. There should be incentives for entrepreneurs to invest in innovations that fit this ‘new’ definition. The government could play an important role in this by creating a market for innovations. Acknowledging that governments in developing countries are not always stable there is also the need for aid and non-government organizations to shape this process. Aid strategies and supra-national institutions should support developing countries in its journey to develop their own scientific and technological capabilities. Furthermore, there is also the need for innovative (social) entrepreneurs that take up the development of a variety of socially appreciated innovations.

The creation of such an environment which stimulates these social innovations can benefit from transition studies. These studies focus on how to realize a transition from our current ‘more unsustainable epoch’ to a more sustainable one. Particularly interesting here is Strategic Niche Management (SNM) which focuses on creating protected niches for socially and sustainably directed innovations to develop. SNM is part of the Multiple Level Perspective (MLP) which allows for the analysis of these sustainable innovations in their political and socio-economic climate. Most transition studies however have been executed in developed countries and therefore research is needed on their applicability in developing countries.

Although this blog is focused on the development of developing countries, in terms of sustainability there is also the need for developed countries to ‘develop’. Getting out of their locked-in unsustainable way of living is not an easy process. Thus also in developed countries it is needed, among other things as behavioral and cognitive change, to redefine innovations by including sustainability. Just as mentioned before, transition studies can be used to achieve a transition towards sustainability. However, there is money needed to protect niches or incentives to invest in sustainable innovations and without social pressure and/or markets this money will be limited. Although, appreciation towards sustainable innovations in developed countries is increasing, still it will take time to realize a sustainable transition.        

It is needed to allow developing countries to follow multiple pathways instead of keep allowing unsustainable development which would eventually require multiple planets to support our needs. But also developed countries play an important role in changing their unsustainable way of living. However, to accomplish this, the redefinition of innovations is needed. This requires support (to change) from a wide variety of actors and this is not easy to realize. So besides the UN COP17 climate negotiations at Durban we should not put all our hope on governments which keep reminding us of the difficulties of requiring global consensus*. Instead we should also foster local initiatives, social entrepreneurs and create a market for social and sustainable projects that may not yet be rewarding. At the moment there are several markets that provide financial incentives for these social and sustainable projects. One of them is the Carbon Market that can be used by entrepreneurs/business in developing countries as a financial incentive to be sustainable. Another market is a new way of funding projects using crowdfunding (for example www.kickstarter.com), which focuses on obtaining money from many individuals that provide a small amount of money for projects that they are interested in.

Moreover, each individual can support sustainable entrepreneurship by trying to act and consume in a manner as sustainable as possible supporting those companies that provide you sustainable products and services**.

*(For a nice article on the use and usefulness of COP17 in Dutch see: http://www.janrotmans.nl/archieven/2011/11/waarom-durban-zinloos-n-zinnig-is.html)

*Also see this briliant 3 minute video on what COP17 is all about: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJ370AgvDMI

**(All people can switch to a more sustainable lifestyle, for Dutch people see: http://www.ikspringover.nl/)

Need to combine Innovation Systems with Welfare States in the Developing South

Our first blog will be devoted to the need for Innovation Systems to be combined with the formation of welfare states at “the periphery”. Believing that this institutional co-evolution would break through the existing constraints of development, the most important being uneven income distribution.

Inequality is a structurally reinforcing phenomena through a process of that is called ‘modernization-marginalization’. This implies that the demand created by the consumption pattern of a small social-economic elite, being similar to that of developed economies, provides a market for ‘limited industrialization. In the first stages of industrialization, the process of import substitution internalizes the production of those goods that replicate the consumption patterns of developed economies. Import substitution requires a combination of protection for the consumer goods industry and subsidies for imports of capital goods. This combination combines productivity gains with the growth of unemployment and this explains the origin of a growing structural employment surplus. Besides, the incentive for import of capital goods blocks the development of an internal capital goods industry. This process leads to both modernization and marginalization having long lasting affects. Industrialization begins, but instead of solving the employment problem, it brings the seeds of new sources of unemployment. Underdevelopment is thus claimed to be directly related to income concentration.

There are two necessary conditions for overcoming underdevelopment: (1) ‘social homogenization’ and (2) ‘the creation of an efficient productive system, endowed with relative technological autonomy’. Technology alone is not capable of overcoming underdevelopment, (high) social heterogeneity , with uneven income distribution, may be a blocking factor. For this reason innovation systems should co-evolve with welfare states which are institutions directly aiming to deal with inequality issues. 

Contributions of the welfare state to NSI (National Systems of Innovation) are: nutrition and health: basic condition for education and work; (b) education: contributing to learning by doing, a prerequisite for activities of a knowledge-based economy; (c) work conditions (safety, healthy, etc.): productivity improvements, learning by doing, workers’ involvement in technical change; reduction in unemployment, internal market expansion, and consequent sophistication of division of labor. Furthermore welfare institutions would mitigate ‘friction’ in the labor market due to technical change: (a) during catching-up process, technical progress may destroy some occupations and demand new ones (labor training and retraining necessary); (b) welfare institutions might establish ‘flexibility’ (worker mobility) without high social costs: this would reinforce a precondition for a more dynamic society, allowing a permanent process of ‘labor repositioning’ pushed by technological revolutions. 
 

From the other direction, NSI improve welfare conditions too: (1) output and productivity growth are sources of welfare improvements; (2) technical progress as a tool for improvement in labor conditions (priority for automation of working places that cause occupational diseases for example); (3) scientific community as a ‘focusing device’: definition of targets that are country specific; (4) ‘mission-oriented’ projects: defined in terms of economically feasible technical solutions to particular social problems.  

As is being claimed more and more often in times of economic crises, social goals should be at the heart of directing economies and technology policies. Politics should again decide the direction of economic behavior instead of politics now being the servants of neoliberal economics. For an interesting paper on the relation between politics and economics in Europe (written in Dutch) see: http://www.trouw.nl/tr/nl/5535/Denker-des-Vaderlands/article/detail/3021193/2011/11/07/Het-einde-van-de-economisch-gerichte-benadering-van-Europa.dhtml