Introduction
Strategic Niche Management (SNM) has been recognised as one of four foundational frameworks of the field of sustainability transitions (Markard et al., 2012). This is somewhat remarkable given its relatively small number of publications compared to three other foundational frameworks – Technological Innovation Systems (TIS), Transition Management (TM) and the Multi-Level Perspective (MLP) – and noting that these four frameworks no longer make up the majority of frameworks in the field anyway (Zolfagharian et al., 2019). Moreover, key SNM concepts, such as niche, protective space, experimentation, learning, expectations, networks, or upscaling, as well as their relationships, are arguable subject to a degree of interpretative flexibility. Yet, as I will argue in this chapter, despite this flexibility (or perhaps because of it), its central arguments have shaped ideas beyond the SNM framework. Likewise, SNM as an evolving research program has been influenced by and mirroring developments and ideas in the broader sustainability transitions field.
This creates a challenge for writing an introductory chapter to the framework. Boundaries around what belongs to SNM and what sits outside of the framework are not straightforward to draw and are subject to debate. For instance, the notion of experimentation – a central concept in SNM – has been developed and used far beyond the SNM field, such as in urban geography and science and technology studies (Karvonen and Heur, 2014). This chapter is predominantly informed by my 20+ years of experience with SNM research in the context of evolving research agendas in the wider field of sustainability transitions.
The remainder of this chapter will first define what strategic niche management is and briefly position its thinking in the broader sustainability transitions field. Section 3 and 4 follow a combined historical and thematic logic. Section 3 discusses the foundations and early developments of SNM up until about the late 2000s. In section 4, the chapter will take a thematic turn and hone in on four aspects of strategic niche management around which SNM development has progressed since then: politics, geography, and institutional aspects. Section 5 discusses challenges and ambiguities of SNM in practice. Section 6 will conclude with a brief outlook.
2. What is Strategic Niche Management and where does it sit in the transitions field?
Definitions of SNM go back to as early as 1994, when Schot et al. (1994: 1073) defined it as “the controlled development and breakdown of protected spaces for new technical applications aiming at market introduction”. A more elaborate definition was put forward by Kemp et al. (1998). In what remains one of the most cited publications in the transition studies field to this day, SNM is defined as: “the creation, development, and controlled phase-out of protected spaces for the development and use of promising technologies by means of experimentation, with the aim of (1) learning about the desirability of the new technology and (2) enhancing the further development and the rate of application of the new technology”. Early SNM research particularly highlighted and characterised three key ‘internal niche processes’ (Hoogma, 2000): 1) articulation and coupling of expectations; 2) facilitating learning processes; and 3) social networks.
The definition by Kemp et al. (1998) highlights several key concepts and underpinning ideas of strategic niche management, including the conceptualisation of niches as ‘protective spaces’, the idea that ‘protective spaces’ can be deliberately created, developed, and phased out, the focus on experimentation as a key enabling mechanism in niche creation and development, the importance of learning, the notion of ‘promises’ as a social mechanism shaping convergence or divergence around development pathways, and finally a normative-political agenda of achieving sustainable development through promoting new technologies. Sections 3-5 will further discuss such ideas in more detail, their origins, and rationales, as well as highlight critiques and limitations that subsequent contributions highlighted. But first, the remainder of this section articulates how SNM is broadly situated in the evolution of the wider sustainability transitions field.
In a recent 10-year anniversary publication of the journal Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions, Truffer et al. (2022) reviewed all publications in the journal in the past 10 years using a co-occurrence and network analysis approach to map focal concepts, theoretical frameworks applied, and policy implications formulated. The analysis demonstrated that at the journal’s inception the niche concept was a central part of the journal publications’ conceptual apparatus, and closely aligned with the MLP and the other two levels in that framework, i.e. ‘socio-technical regime’ and ‘landscape’. SNM operated at the fringes of the field and has continued to do so in subsequent years. In the years following the establishment of the journal, the niche concept took less central stage, but continued to receive substantial attention (indicated by the size of the bubble), often in relation to newly emerging disciplinary crossovers in the field such as political science, human geography, sociology and (more recently) psychology. This also indicates the co-evolutionary nature of SNM research with the wider sustainability transitions field as will be discussed in section 4 of this chapter.
Figure 1: The evolving field-positioning of SNM and the niche concept in the journal Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions (Truffer et al., 2022).
The concepts of niches and experimentation, which are central to the idea of SNM as section 3 will further explore, have also been influenced by and influencing other frameworks in transition studies (figure 2). In the original approach to Transition Management (Loorbach, 2010), the idea of experimentation is one of four activities in the transition management cycle. In the Multi-Level Perspective (Geels, 2002), niches are one of three analytical levels considered to be central in shaping sustainability transitions. And in the Technological Innovation Systems approach, ideas on niches and experimentation are routinely mentioned in relation to entrepreneurial activities and market formation. See chapters 2, 3 and 4 in this book for further discussion of these frameworks.
2. 3. Background and early developments
The early development of SNM took inspiration from three fields of research: evolutionary economic theories on technological change; Science and Technology Studies (STS); and historical research. Evolutionary theories were mobilised to unpack how processes of variation, selection, and retention explain radical change and stability in technological innovation, and the role of niches as protective spaces in technological evolution against the backdrop of path-dependent regimes. STS was mobilised to unpack the role of actors and agency in these processes, including the role of expectations, learning, and social networks. Historical research provided ample empirical examples and illustrations of historical transitions. The next paragraphs will elaborate on this.
From evolutionary economic theories, in the work from scholars such as Dosi (1982) and Nelson and Winter (1982), a key starting point was that technological change can be best understood as evolving through processes of variation, selection, and retention – like biological processes of Darwinian evolution (Raven, 2005). Technological variation refers to the discovery and creation of new inventions and innovations, for instance in corporate R&D laboratories. Like new biological species, such innovations become successful or forgotten through processes of selection – referring to markets and users preferring certain innovations over others. Retention in economic evolutionary theory generally is used to consider shared heuristics and routines that engineers and other actors in the variation environment develop to guide their R&D processes, as they learn what users and markets prefer. This ultimately gives rise to technological change as a structured processes that occurs through technological trajectories, leading to dominant designs that undergo incremental change once dominant. Only under rare, punctuated circumstances, or as a result of long evolving processes of incremental change, prior dominant designs may loose ground to new ones. Dosi (1982) used the notion of ‘technological paradigm’ to indicate the structuring nature of shared heuristics and routines, while Nelson and Winter (1982) referred to ‘technological regimes’
Early transition and SNM scholars such as Ari Rip, Johan Schot and Rene Kemp, and later on Frank Geels, took inspiration from evolutionary reasoning too (in economics, but also adjacent evolutionary thinking in for instance management theory or biological evolution, e.g. Leventhal, 1998; Schot and Geels, 2007), but grounded their perspectives in insights from Science and Technology Studies and historical studies of technology. They were inspired and contributed to STS research on Large Technical Systems (Hughes, 1983), Social Construction of Technology (Bijker et al., 1989), and Sociology of Expectations (Lente, 1993). Their work firmly added attention to actors and agency in evolutionary processes of generating variations, as well as broadening and unpacking the role and dynamics of the selection environment. For instance, particular emphasis was put on user-involvement in niche experimentation to shape learning about their preferences or the need to involve policy-makers earlier on to inform debate about regulating the potential negative impacts of new innovations (Hoogma et al., 2002). More attention for actors and agency in processes of variation led Rip (1995) and Schot (1998) to propose a quasi-evolutionary theory of technological change, which argues that, in contrast to biological evolution where variation through gene mutation is an undirected and ‘blind’ process, in technological change variation is to some extent socially constructed. Engineers not only anticipate future selection environments for their innovations, but also actively engage in shaping them, for instance through educating users or lobbying regulators or financial institutions.
Broadening and unpacking the role of the selection environment involves moving from a narrow economic view on selection pressures (prices) to a more multi-dimensional and socio-technical understanding of what shapes selection pressures, including institutional pressures such as policy frameworks, financial framework conditions, or social norms, as well as technological aspects such as the type and characteristics of material infrastructures that are build up in co-evolution with the diffusion of prior dominant innovations (such as existing road infrastructure favouring car mobility over active or public transport). Naturally, this also broadened the types of actors that need to be included in transition analysis (and governance frameworks) beyond firms and end-users, to include attention for social groups such as policy makers, NGOs, community groups, civil society organisations or financial institutions, each of which engages with transitions with particular capabilities, resources, needs and interests. Geels (2004) captured this debate and reframed the original notion of ‘technological regime’, defined by Rip and Kemp (1998) as “the grammar or rule-set embedded in a complex of engineering practices, production process technologies, product characteristics, skills and procedures, ways of handling relevant artefacts and persons, ways of defining problems – all of them embedded in institutions and infrastructures”. Geels (2004) extended this definition by incorporating social groups beyond engineers, and selection pressures beyond the variation environment, and referred to this as ‘socio-technical regimes’.
Historical research (Schot, 1998) into how large-scale, paradigmatic technological change evolves as well as contemporary case study research on sustainable transport (Hoogma et al., 2002) has further informed the early development of SNM, and in particular by putting centre stage and unpacking the role of ‘niches’. The basic argument put forward is that because of the structured nature of socio-technical regimes and associated selection pressures for radical innovations, radical innovations that substantially deviate from the dominant design, will generally have a hard time surviving in pre-existing selection environments. Niches (defined as protective spaces), such as geographically disperse areas where infrastructure is underdeveloped, or market niches where environmentally conscious consumers are willing to pay higher prices for lower performance, provide space for the early survival and development of radical innovations, because they shielded these innovations from mainstream selection pressures. Through a process called niche branching – innovations moving and diffusing from one niche to another – radical innovations improve and adapt, and ultimately compete and diffuse into mainstream markets.
SNM scholarship further proposes that insights into these patterns of radical technological change can provide ground for a new, evolutionary informed approach to deliberate policy design for managing regime shifts to sustainability. Kemp et al. (1998) comprehensively spell out this perspective and argue that niches can be deliberately created by experimenting with innovations in real-life contexts such as in pilot and demonstration programs and, more recently, in living labs. Empirical research finds that successful experimentation and strategic niche management enables key internal niche processes (Hoogma, 2000; Raven, 2005). Three types of processes are highlighted and characterised: 1) articulation and coupling of expectations in a way that they become shared, tangible, and specific; 2) facilitating multi-dimensional and reflexive learning processes that question underpinning assumptions; and 3) the formation of heterogenous and deep social networks that build a constituency behind an innovation. Weber et al. (1999) further formulated seventeen management suggestions that policy makers and innovators can use to implement a Strategic Niche Management approach in practice.
This initial phase of developments and research into SNM in the 1990s and early 2000s has led to 2 broad reflections and critiques. The first critique that was voiced as early as 1995 pointed to experimentation and niche development occurring outside of the formal structures of government, firms, and research organisations. Verheul and Vergragt (1995) argue that in the development of environmental technologies, many initiatives are taken by citizen groups or non-governmental organisations. Through three cases of windmill cooperations, wastewater treatments and freezers, they propose the notion of social niche management to foreground these developments and their relevance in regime shifts and sustainability transitions. In a similar vein, others have pointed to the role of non-state and non-corporate actors in countries that gave rise to early renewable energy transitions such as Denmark (Garud and Karnoe, 2003) and Germany (Dewald and Truffer, 2011). This line of thought has been echoed and advanced in grassroots innovation research. Seyfang and Smith (2007) elegantly contrast market-based innovation with grassroots innovation, characterising the latter as innovation and experimentation occurring in the social economy rather than the market economy; driven by social needs and different types of values than profit, prices and policies; occurring through a range of organisational forms such as voluntary and informal community groups; and drawing on resources beyond commercial ones, including voluntary input, civil society grants and mutual exchanges. Subsequent empirical work into the transition town movement (Seyfang and Haxeltine, 2012) and community currency (Seyfang and Longhorst, 2015) explored the relevance and limitations of SNM in these grassroots contexts. Building on this and other SNM work, Smith et al. (2016) reflects that experimentation in grassroots contexts have a pivotal role in critiquing and challenges regimes and pointing towards alternative, emancipatory development trajectories and policy agendas.
A second reflection on the limitations of SNM is offered in Hoogma et al. (2002). Synthesising the results from a multi-year research program into sustainable transport, they argue that “For one thing, we were certainly over-optimistic about the potential of SNM as a tool for transition. The positive circles of feedback by which a technology comes into its own and escapes a technological niche are far weaker than expected and appear to take longer than expected (5 years or more)”. This critical observation informed a new research direction in SNM that was oriented towards 1) analysing niche dynamics over longer periods of time; and 2) improving understandings of niche-regime interaction. Following and comparing the development of biogas technologies in the Netherlands and Denmark, Raven (2005) and Geels and Raven (2006), informed by Hård (1994) and Deuten (2003), reconceptualised niche development as occurring through both local and global processes (figure 3). Local processes refer to the experimentation in particular places and projects, whereas global processes refer to the aggregation of local knowledge into shared socio-cognitive structures through constructs such as shared agenda’s, search heuristics, expectations, and theories. I refer to chapter 11 in this book for further discussion on niche-regime interactions.
With a growing and expanding transitions research community and increasing visibility of ongoing sustainability transitions in the real world, by the early 2010s sustainability transitions scholarship branched into new topical and scholarly directions, and in particular topics related to political, geographical, and institutional aspects of transitions. This is also reflected in new directions for SNM research scholarship, which I will discuss in the following section.
4. Elaborations
4.1. The politics of SNM
Research on the politics of SNM has been influenced by a broader movement in the transition studies field to engage with questions around politics and power. This was the result of scholarly reflections on initial applications of transition thinking in policy processes, such as in the energy transition policies in the Netherlands (Kemp et al., 2007; Hendriks and Grin, 2007, Smith and Kern, 2009). This was also informed by more attention for the governance of sustainability transitions (Smith et al., 2005; Voss et al., 2006), understanding and unpacking power in transitions (Avelino, 2011), as well as scholarship in adjacent communities such as human geography that started to offer critical reflections (Shove and Walker, 2007).
Research on the politics of SNM particularly focussed on unpacking the concept of protective space. An initial critique of this notion of protection is offered by Hommels et al. (2007) who pitched SNM against the another framework for introducing radical innovations, called PROTEE. While the resulting brief exchange (Geels and Schot, 2007; Hommels et al., 2007) following the original publication did not pick up on it, Hommels et al. (2007) made the relevant observation that, in contrast to the PROTEE framework, SNM has an explicit political objective, which is aimed at realising sustainable development through the promotion of new innovations. Another relevant contribution is made in the PhD thesis by Ulmanen (2013), who extends SNM with a discourse analysis approach to show how different outcomes between biofuel developments in the Netherlands and Sweden can only be understood if it is considered how dynamics in diverse biofuel advocacy coalitions and policy discourses in the Netherlands were more mutually exclusive and antagonistic than in the more collaborative Swedish context. These differences are in turn related to different national industrial structures and histories. This politically informed analysis of niche protection (see also Byrne (2018)) provides an improved understanding of the shrinking and/or growing of protective space.
Smith and Raven (2012) and Raven et al. (2016) expand on these debates. The key idea introduced and explored through this work is to move SNM beyond a focus on protection as shielding and nurturing new innovations (which is labelled as inward-oriented niche development work), to incorporate analytical attention for the outward-oriented, socio-political work that niche advocates engage in. This work involves the different types of activities that niche advocates such as advocacy groups, trade associations, entrepreneurs, social movements, user groups, engaged academics, or political leaders undertake to create and shape empowering narratives supporting a particular niche innovation. Empowerment is a political process, because it is characterised by an interplay of multiple actors and their (divergent or converging) interests. As Smith and Raven (2012: 1032) argue: “Not all actors enter into these negotiations equally: some are able to exercise greater influence owing to their resource attributes, experience, institutional positions, and connections with other influential actors, all relative to the task in hand; but neither does any single actor, such as an industrial lobby, or a government department, have sufficient power to force through decisions, strategies, and implementation activities unilaterally”. Smith and Raven (2012) furthermore characterise and contrast two overarching empowering narratives, i.e. fit-and-conform versus stretch-and-transform narratives. The objective in fit-and-conform narratives is to convince the wider social world that the niche can become competitive within conventional regime criteria and selection pressures. That is, the innovation will ultimately be able to perform profitably in existing markets, and does not require radical changes to regime structures. The objective in stretch-and-transform is to convince the wider social world that the rules of the game need to be changed. The selection pressures constituted by prevailing regimes need to be transformed for niche innovations to flourish, which means that the political challenges to convey stretch-and-transform narratives are substantially larger than for fit-and-confirm narratives. Subsequent case study research in domains such as energy (Raven et al., 2016) and health (Boon et al., 2014) illustrate the relevance of this approach in understanding political dynamics of SNM.
4.2. The geography of SNM
Like attention for the politics of SNM was influenced by a ‘political turn’ in sustainability transitions literature, around the early 2010s a ‘spatial turn’ (Coenen et al., 2012; Truffer et al., 2015) in the transitions community influenced and was shaped by emerging critiques of a lack of attention for geography in sustainability transitions. Three debates and questions on the geography of sustainability transitions are relevant for discussing the geography of SNM (Coenen et al., 2012). First, geography of transitions research questions the relative naivety in the ways in which prior transitions research has engaged with spatial questions and concepts. Concepts such as space, scale, upscaling, level, and place are routinely used in transition studies, without reference to long-standing debates in geography. Second, geography of transitions points attention to the uneven distribution of where transitions happen and why they happen where they happen. Third, geography of transitions research critiques pre-existing transitions literature for conflating systems levels with spatial scales and lacking attention for multi-scalar dynamics, and points to a need to look beyond the national scale as the only scale at which transition dynamics unfold.
Together, these critiques and developments translated into several new research themes and dynamics in SNM scholarship. For one, a vivid and rapid expansion of research in urban studies scholarship on experimentation and urban living labs has led to a very productive expansion of research outputs and debates extending way beyond the boundaries of SNM scholarship. This has resulted in diverging views on what experimentation entails and with what purposes actors engage with experimentation. In traditional SNM research experimentation is conceptualised as a mechanism to nurture and grow radical innovation with a view to influence system-level transitions towards sustainability. Sengers et al. (2019), based on a systematic review of experimentation literature in the context of sustainability transitions, capture this focus in their definition of an experiment: “an inclusive, practice-based and challenge-led initiative designed to promote system innovation through social learning under conditions of uncertainty and ambiguity”. They also recognise, nevertheless, an emerging stream of urban geography literature on experimentation and living labs. In contrast with the innovation focus in sustainability transitions literature, urban geography literature focusses on governance dynamics in the context of urban politics. Bulkeley and Castán-Broto (2013), Bulkeley et al. (2014), Evans at al. (2016) and Marvin et al. (2018) all observe and analyse a global mushrooming of urban experimentation and urban living labs taking place in the context of city governments and other urban actors seeking new ways of governing and navigating the political complexities of responding to climate change and other societal challenges and technological developments (such as smart cities). These contributions often take a critical perspective on the neo-liberal conditions within which this navigation is framed and taking place.
Coenen et al. (2010) provide an early response to critiques of spatial naivety in SNM studies by extending and ‘spatialising’ niche-based frameworks through the concept of proximity. Proximity is a concept from economic geography that reflects the notion that innovation tends to be geographically uneven, and often concentred in regional clusters in which knowledge, networks and institutions have developed over longer periods of time. Drawing on five types of proximity (cognitive, organisational, social, institutional, geographical) as identified by Boschma (2005), Coenen et al (2010) find in a case study on the Dutch thermal aquifer storage niche that proximity relationships in local experimentation indeed improve understandings of scaling and aggregation into a global niche level. However, they also find that proximity literature can benefit from incorporating a more agency-based and dynamic perspective on proximity advantages and should acknowledge that too much proximity can also inhibit innovation processes.
Raven et al. (2012) further expand on spatialising the niche concept in the context of the MLP. This contribution makes an explicit attempt to incorporate a spatial scale into the MLP, which is an extension of the two existing scales of temporality and structure in the MLP. In the conventional MLP, the niche level is considered to operate at a temporal scale of 0-10 years and conceptualised as a protective space that shields experimentation from mainstream regime structures. Mobilising insights from proximity theory and conceptualising space from a relational perspective, a spatial scale of the niche level is then proposed to consist of networks that exhibit relatively low levels of proximity and power, relative to the regime and landscape levels. This reconceptualization of the MLP allows for analysis of transition dynamics that take multi-scalar spatial dynamics into account (see box 1 for an example of transition dynamics from a multi-scalar perspective). This also allows for better accounting for the ways in which the spatial heterogeneity of regimes shapes the uneven spatial emergence of niche innovation, as demonstrated for car-sharing in the Netherlands by Meelen et al. (2019).
Another area of SNM research responding to geographical critiques has investigated the ways in which international relations influence niche dynamics and experimentation, in particular as occurring in the global south and between the global south and the global north. Wieczorek et al. (2015) develop a typology of transnational linkages consisting of actors, knowledge, capital, institutions, and technology and identify their existence or absence in 65 solar PV experiments in India, including lanterns, grid connected PV systems, solar home systems, micro-grids, off grid power plants, roof top solar and solar cities. They find a total of 214 out of 325 possible linkages in the sample, indicating a strong international presence in the Indian PV experimentation portfolio. Wieczorek et al. (2015) acknowledge their work did not include an assessment of the influence or challenges present in transnational linkages. Hansen and Nygaard (2013) through a case study of donor interventions in the palm oil biomass waste-to-energy niche in Malaysia provide additional evidence about the role of transnational linkages in niche development, but also raise concerns about challenges in the mobility of energy policy across diverse nations and cultures.
Sengers and Raven (2015) also take a relational perspective to unpack the supra-national networks and dynamics that influence the diffusion of Bus Rapid Transit systems from South America to Asia in particular. Drawing on human geography literature on buzz-pipelines, global production networks and policy mobilities they identify and characterise how multi-scaler international arenas of mobility-experts-cum-advocates shape mobilities of niche innovations across national borders, and into global circulation. The case study also demonstrates how experimentation is both anchored in and influenced by sectoral regime structures as well as territorial, place-based structures, and they argue that national actors in this way continue to play an important role in SNM, for instance in relation to fund raising and providing political legitimacy to projects. This contribution (see also Fontes et al., 2015) recasts the upscaling and global diffusion of niche experimentation from a ‘mechanistic’ aggregation perspective in the traditional local-global niche model into a deeply agentic and political process.
A final stream of geography informed SNM research that I will discuss here are several contributions that are concerned with exploring what makes certain contexts and environments conducive to experimentation and niche development. Torrens et al. (2018) argue that SNM research has extensively explored how protective spaces for experimentation emerge, but only deals in a limited way why this happens in particular places, and how these places evolve to become experimental. Through a historical case study of the Bristol civic energy scene, they show how Bristol has become a vibrant place for energy experimentation through four phases, each of which is characterised by patterns of experimentation and modes of governing, and each reconfiguring the city context, which set the stage for the next phase. Ultimately, this leads to a city with vibrant grassroots activism, municipal voluntarism, alternative milieus, strategic urbanism and municipal self-righteousness, all of which are supportive for further experimentation. Based on this pioneering work, Torrens et al. (2019) and Heiligenberg et al. (2022) broaden the framing of niches from protective spaces that offer a seedbed for innovation, to niches as harbours, and as battleground. These subsequently foreground complementary enabling functions of niches as providing connectivity and as spaces to resolve conflict, tensions, and struggles (on conflicts, see also Yuana et al., 2020).
In contrast to the process approach taken by Torrens et al. (2018), Dignum et al. (2020) mobilise a variance approach to identify the key context factors that are conducive to experimentation. They identify 7 urban factors that shape the emergence, degree of radicality and the nature of urban experimentation (social, technological, or systemic). These factors are policy visions and plans, governance and stakeholder networks, localised learning processes, financial resources and funding structures, localised information institutions, natural endowments, and urban materiality. Drawing on a large database of Nature-Based Solutions they identify what characterises an innovative city environment, including factors such as stakeholder diversity, the presence of non-traditional innovators, a wide range of funding structures, diverse governance arrangements, and explicit mechanisms for localised learning, including involvement of citizens.
4.3. Institutional perspectives on SNM
A third development in the wider transitions literature with which SNM research has co-evolved relates to institutional perspectives. Institutional perspectives on sustainability transitions offer critique and insights into two aspects of sustainability transitions (Fuenfschilling, 2019). The first aspect relates to addressing and advancing understanding of the heterogenous nature and semi-coherence of socio-technical regimes, drawing on insights from literature such as institutional logics (Fuenfschilling and Truffer, 2014) and institutional pillars (Geels, 2004). From an institutional perspective, regimes differ in their degree of institutionalisation and coherence (see also chapter 8). Moreover, regimes display different degrees of coherences and institutionalisation across territories (Fuenfschilling and Binz, 2018). The second aspect relates to accounts of actors and their embedded agency. Drawing on institutional work and institutional entrepreneurship (Hoogstraaten et al., 2020), this branch is concerned with investigating how actors that are embedded within institutional fields and subject to regulative, normative and cognitive pressures, are able to envision and enact divergent change (Garud et al., 2007)?
SNM scholarship has engaged with these institutional debates. With regards to heterogeneity of regimes, as mentioned earlier, Meelen et al. (2019) investigate how the adoption of car-sharing is spatially uneven in the Netherlands, which they explain by characterising the incumbent car regime as a patchwork of localities where the regime is more or less institutionalised. Raven et al. (2017) mobilise neo-institutional literature to investigate how and why institutional arrangements for urban experimentation differ between cities. They analyse the cognitive, normative and regulative institutions that together make up institutional arrangements within which smart city experimentation in the cities of Amsterdam, Hamburg and Ningbo are embedded. They find ample differences between the cities and on that basis argue that experimentation is imprinted by unique combinations of institutions at play in each location. These institutional arrangements are considered multi-scalar as actors involved not only draw on local or regional institutions (such as the presence of research organisations), but also on what arguable are national institutional characteristics, such as national governance styles and policy programmes. Likewise, in each case, strategic work to develop institutional arrangements tapped into the wider institutional environments across national boundaries (such as EU-funding and transnational learning). In a similar vein, van Waes et al. (2020) demonstrate how bike-sharing entrepreneurs strategically responded very differently to diverging institutional pressures in localised regimes in Amsterdam versus Shanghai.
With regards to accounts of actors and agency through a lens of institutional theory, several contributions use institutional theory to explore the role of actors and agency in the Australian water sector transition (Brown et al., 2013; Fuenfschilling and Truffer, 2016). Van Doren et al. (2020) (see also Jolly et al., 2016) mobilises a typology of institutional work to investigate the type of agency niche actors undertake to influence their institutional environments. They characterise 13 intermediary organisations in the Dutch low-carbon housing niche as institutional entrepreneurs that are mobilising political, technical, and cultural strategies to develop the niche and transform the incumbent build environment regime. They find that these strategies differ depending on the context in which intermediaries are operating. For instance, market-based intermediaries mobilise only political strategies (such as coalition building) and technical strategies (such as standardisation efforts), whereas community-based intermediaries also draw on cultural strategies such as the creation of new identities. They also find that intermediaries that are oriented towards directly influencing regimes (rather than creating and maintaining niche institutions) also engage in lobbying strategies and efforts to educate and raise awareness. Similar findings have been reported by Kivimaa (2014) and Bush et al. (2017), who both mobilise SNM scholarship to explore the role of intermediary organisations in system-level transitions, as well as by Farrelly and Brown (2011) who use the notion of bridging organisations as critical agents in changing regimes so that they become conducive to niche experimentation. For more discussion of the role of intermediaries, see also chapter 20 in this book.
5. SNM in practice: challenges and ambiguities
SNM has been predominantly used as a tool for analysing niche developments and experimentation, and making recommendations based on those analyses. A few attempts have been made to codify and generalise these lessons into guidelines, toolkits, and handbooks for managing and designing experiments, niches, and transition pathways more generally (Weber et al., 1999; Caniels and Romijn, 2008; Raven et al., 2010; Ceschin, 2014). While there are limitations to what can be prescribed for managing niches and transitions, because of their non-linear and long-term dynamics, such attempts are arguably useful for conveying knowledge to a non-academic audience. Most recently, Schraven et al. (2021) propose that SNM can be used to enhance Design Thinking by increasing the preparedness of an innovation team for a successful market implementation of sustainable innovations. These developments in SNM scholarship align with broader engagements in the field of sustainability transitions that aim to position transition scholarship in relation to innovation policy debates (Nill and Kemp, 2009; Schot and Steinmueller, 2018), in relation to design disciplines (Ceschin and Gaziulusoy, 2016), as well as in embedding transition perspectives directly into policy design (Geels et al., 2019).
Besides making recommendations or positioning SNM in wider policy and innovation debates, several contributions in SNM scholarship offer reflections on the challenges and ambiguities involved in doing SNM in practice. An early warning came from Lovell (2007) who contrast the development of the UK low-energy housing niche with recommendations in SNM theory. She argues that SNM needs to be pay more attention to the messiness and non-linearity of socio-technical systems change, an insight that is supported by findings by Verhees et al. (2013) and Smith et al. (2014) regarding solar PV niche developments in the UK and the Netherlands. Van Waes et al. (2021) confront insights from SNM with actual experiences in four smart cycling living labs. They find that creating a shared vision, aligning expectations and facilitating learning processes are considered most challenging by participants in the living labs, while creating broad and deep networks is less challenging. They also find that experimentation is deeply shaped by local political agendas and resources and that terminology on niches, experimentation and living labs may itself be contested or confusing. Regarding the latter, see also Heiskanen et al (2015) who argue that SNM scholars engaging in experimentation involving ordinary people should attend to the social and personal reasons why these people engage in experimentation and, importantly, why they might quite sensibly be averse to a great degree of experimentalism, and for good reasons be risk-averse and not willing to accept failure.
Recently, Hodson et al. (2017) and Sharp and Raven (2021), echoing Lovell’s earlier concerns, have started to highlight the complexity, ambiguity, and multiplicity within and through which experimentation in cities evolve, and that there is a need for SNM and experimentation to find ways to accommodate this. Torrens et al. (2021) warn for a ‘projectification’ of urban experimentation and provide three suggestions to redress this: don’t assume that experiments should work as projects; render traditional projects more experimental; and establish hybrid spaces that mediate between projects, experiments and permanent organisations. Bulkeley (2023) suggest we may be entering a condition of permanent urban experimentation and that it may neither be possible nor even desirable to return to more centralized and controlled responses to climate change. These emerging insights on the challenges and ambiguities of SNM suggests that future research on SNM and experimentation continues to be necessary and relevant to understanding and governing transitions in the context of major societal challenges. The next section provides a few directions for future research.
6. Outlook and conclusion
This chapter has presented an overview of SNM scholarship since its inception in the early 1990s. SNM has been a corner stone in the development of the wider sustainability transitions field as a foundational framework. Ideas, concepts, and arguments on niches and experimentation has informed and been influenced by evolving agendas in the field. In the final section of this chapter, I briefly highlight several themes for future research. First, SNM scholarship and practice should pay more attention to engaging with ordinary people, behaviour change, and everyday perspectives (Verbong et al., 2013; Heiskanen et al, 2015; Kaufman et al., 2021; Sharp et al, 2022). How can ordinary people, their behaviours and practices, and everyday sites such as households (Raven et al., 2021) inform deliberate processes of experimentation and SNM. Second, SNM scholarship could engage with debates on incumbency and discontinuation (Turnheim and Geels, 2019). Can deliberate experimentation with discontinuing unsustainable practices and technologies inform the acceleration of sustainability transitions? Third, SNM scholarship and practice can engage with debates on just transitions (Jenkins et al., 2016). How can distributional, recognition and procedural justice be (better) accounted for in niche experimentation? Fourth, and finally, SNM scholarship can broaden its methodological preference of cases studies to include approaches such as modelling, qualitative comparative analysis, large-scale database approaches, ethnographic methods, and action research.
Avelino, F., 2011. Power in transition. Empowering discourses on sustainability transitions. PhD thesis. Erasmus University
Bijker, W.E., Hughes, T.P., Pinch, T.J. (Eds.), 1989. The social construction of technological systems: new directions in the sociology and history of technology, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass.
Boschma, R., 2005. Proximity and Innovation: A Critical Assessment. Regional Studies 39, 61–74. https://doi.org/10.1080/0034340052000320887
Boon, W.P.C., Moors, E.H.M., Meijer, A.J., 2014. Exploring dynamics and strategies of niche protection. Research Policy 43, 792–803. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.respol.2014.01.005
Brown, R.R., Farrelly, M.A., Loorbach, D.A., 2013. Actors working the institutions in sustainability transitions: The case of Melbourne’s stormwater management. Global Environmental Change 23, 701–718. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2013.02.013
Bulkeley, H., 2023. The condition of urban climate experimentation. Sustainability: Science, Practice and Policy 19, 2188726. https://doi.org/10.1080/15487733.2023.2188726
Bulkeley, H., Castán Broto, V., 2013. Government by experiment? Global cities and the governing of climate change: Government by experiment? Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 38, 361–375. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-5661.2012.00535.x
Bulkeley, H., Castán Broto, V., Edwards, G., 2014. An urban politics of climate change. Experimentation and the governing of socio-technical transitions. Routledge
Bush, R.E., Bale, C.S.E., Powell, M., Gouldson, A., Taylor, P.G., Gale, W.F., 2017. The role of intermediaries in low carbon transitions – Empowering innovations to unlock district heating in the UK. Journal of Cleaner Production 148, 137–147. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2017.01.129
Byrne, R., Mbeva, K., Ockwell, D., 2018. A political economy of niche-building: Neoliberal-developmental encounters in photovoltaic electrification in Kenya. Energy Research & Social Science 44, 6–16. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2018.03.028
Caniëls, M.C.J., Romijn, H.A., 2008. Strategic niche management: towards a policy tool for sustainable development. Technology Analysis & Strategic Management 20, 245–266. https://doi.org/10.1080/09537320701711264
Ceschin, F., 2014. How the Design of Socio-technical Experiments Can Enable Radical Changes for Sustainability [WWW Document]. International Journal of Dsign. URL http://www.ijdesign.org/ojs/index.php/IJDesign/article/view/1308/650
Ceschin, F., Gaziulusoy, I., 2016. Evolution of design for sustainability: From product design to design for system innovations and transitions. Design Studies. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.destud.2016.09.002
Coenen, L., Benneworth, P., Truffer, B., 2012. Toward a spatial perspective on sustainability transitions. Research Policy 41, 968–979. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.respol.2012.02.014
Coenen, L., Raven, R.P.J.M., Verbong, G.P.J., 2010. Local niche experimentation in the energy transition: a theoretical and empirical exploration of proximity advantages and disadvantages. Technology in Society. 32(4), 295-302
Deuten, J.J., 2003. Cosmopolitanising Technology: A Study of Four Emerging Technological Regimes. Enschede, Twente University Press
Dewald, U., Truffer, B., 2011. Market Formation in Technological Innovation Systems—Diffusion of Photovoltaic Applications in Germany. Industry & Innovation 18, 285–300. https://doi.org/10.1080/13662716.2011.561028
Dignum, M., Dorst, H., Schie, M. van, Dassen, T., Raven, R.P.J.M., 2020. Nurturing nature: exploring socio-spatial conditions for urban experimentation. Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions. 34, 7-25
Doren, D. van, Runhaar, H., Raven, R.P.J.M., Giezen, M., Driessen. P.J., 2020. Institutional work in diverse niche contexts: the case of low-carbon housing in the Netherlands. Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions. 35, 116-134
Dosi, G., 1982. Technological paradigms and technological trajectories: a suggested interpretation of the determinants and directions of technical change. Research policy 11, 147–162.
Evans, J.P.M., Karvonen, A., Raven, R. (Eds.), 2016. The experimental city, Routledge research in sustainable urbanism. Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, London ; New York.
Farrelly, M., Brown, R., 2011. Rethinking urban water management: Experimentation as a way forward? Global Environmental Change 21, 721–732. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2011.01.007
Fontes, M., Sousa, C., Ferreira, J., 2015. The spatial dynamics of niche trajectory: The case of wave energy. Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eist.2015.09.003
Fuenfschilling, L., 2019. An institutional perspective on sustainability transitions, in: Handbook of Sustainable Innovation. Edward Elgar Publishing, pp. 219–236. https://doi.org/10.4337/9781788112574.00020
Fuenfschilling, L., Binz, C., 2018. Global socio-technical regimes. Research Policy 47, 735–749. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.respol.2018.02.003
Fuenfschilling, L., Truffer, B., 2014. The structuration of socio-technical regimes—Conceptual foundations from institutional theory. Research Policy 43, 772–791. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.respol.2013.10.010
Fuenfschilling, L., Truffer, B., 2016. The interplay of institutions, actors and technologies in socio-technical systems — An analysis of transformations in the Australian urban water sector. Technological Forecasting and Social Change 103, 298–312. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2015.11.023
Garud, R., Hardy, C., Maguire, S., 2007. Institutional Entrepreneurship as Embedded Agency: An Introduction to the Special Issue. Organization Studies 28, 957–969. https://doi.org/10.1177/0170840607078958
Garud, R., Karnøe, P., 2003. Bricolage versus breakthrough: distributed and embedded agency in technology entrepreneurship. Research Policy, Special Issue on Technology Entrepreneurship and Contact Information for corresponding authors 32, 277–300. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0048-7333(02)00100-2
Geels, F.W., 2002. Technological transitions as evolutionary reconfiguration processes: a multi-level perspective and a case-study. Research policy 31, 1257–1274.
Geels, F.W., 2004. From sectoral systems of innovation to socio-technical systems. Research Policy 33, 897–920. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.respol.2004.01.015
Geels, F., Raven, R., 2006. Non-linearity and expectations in niche-development trajectories: ups and downs in Dutch biogas development (1973–2003). Technology Analysis & Strategic Management 18, 375–392.
Geels, F.W., Schot, J., 2007. Comment on ‘Techno therapy or nurtured niches?’ by Hommels et al. [Res. Policy 36 (7) (2007)]. Research Policy 36, 1100–1101. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.respol.2007.07.004
Geels, F., Turnheim, B., Asquith, M., Kern, F., Kivimaa, P., European Environment Agency, 2019. Sustainability transitions: policy and practice.
Hansen, U.E., Nygaard, I., 2013. Transnational linkages and sustainable transitions in emerging countries: Exploring the role of donor interventions in niche development. Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions 8, 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eist.2013.07.001
Heiligenberg, H.A.R.M. van den, Heimeriks, G.J., Hekkert, M.P., Raven, R.P.J.M., 2022. Harbours for the translocal diffusion of sustainability innovations in Europe. Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions. 42, 374-394
Heiskanen, E., Jalas, M., Rinkinen, J., Tainio, P., 2015. The local community as a “low-carbon lab”: Promises and perils. Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions 14, 149–164. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eist.2014.08.001
Hekkert, M.P., Suurs, R.A.A., Negro, S.O., Kuhlmann, S., Smits, R.E.H.M., 2007. Functions of innovation systems: A new approach for analysing technological change. Technological Forecasting and Social Change 74, 413–432. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2006.03.002
Hendriks, C.M., Grin, J., 2007. Contextualizing Reflexive Governance: the Politics of Dutch Transitions to Sustainability. Journal of Environmental Policy & Planning 9, 333–350. https://doi.org/10.1080/15239080701622790
Hodson, M., Geels, F., McMeekin, A., 2017. Reconfiguring Urban Sustainability Transitions, Analysing Multiplicity. Sustainability 9, 299. https://doi.org/10.3390/su9020299
Hommels, A., Peters, P., Bijker, W.E., 2007. Techno therapy or nurtured niches? Technology studies and the evaluation of radical innovations. Research Policy 36, 1088–1099. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.respol.2007.04.002
Hommels, A., Peters, P., Bijker, W.E., 2007. Reply to Geels and Schot. Research Policy 36, 1102–1103. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.respol.2007.07.003
Hoogma, R., 2000. Exploiting technological niches, Thesis, Twente University, Enschede
Hoogma, R., Kemp, R., Schot, J.W., Truffer, B., 2002. Experimenting for sustainable transport. The approach of strategic niche management. Spon, London; New York.
Hoogstraaten, M.J., Frenken, K., Boon, W.P.C., 2020. The study of institutional entrepreneurship and its implications for transition studies. Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions 36, 114–136. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eist.2020.05.004
Hughes, T.P., 1983. Networks of power: electrification in Western society, 1880-1930. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore.
Hård, M., 1991. Technology as practice: local and global closure processes in diesel-engine design, Social Studies of Science, 24, pp. 549–585
Jenkins, K., McCauley, D., Heffron, R., Stephan, H., Rehner, R., 2016. Energy justice: A conceptual review. Energy Research & Social Science 11, 174–182. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2015.10.004
Jolly, S., Spodniak, P., Raven, R.P.J.M, 2016. Institutional entrepreneurship in transforming energy systems towards sustainability: wind energy in Finland and India. Energy Research and Social Science. 17, 102-118
Karvonen, A., van Heur, B., 2014. Urban Laboratories: Experiments in Reworking Cities. Int J Urban Reg Res 38, 379–392. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-2427.12075
Kaufman, S., Saeri, A., Raven, R.P.J.M., Malekpour, S., Smith, L., 2021. Behaviour in sustainability transitions: a mixed methods literature review. Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions. 40, 586-608
Kemp, R., Rotmans, J., Loorbach, D., 2007. Assessing the Dutch Energy Transition Policy: How Does it Deal with Dilemmas of Managing Transitions? Journal of Environmental Policy & Planning 9, 315–331. https://doi.org/10.1080/15239080701622816
Kemp, R., Schot, J., Hoogma, R., 1998. Regime shifts to sustainability through processes of niche formation: The approach of strategic niche management. Technology Analysis & Strategic Management 10, 175–198. https://doi.org/10.1080/09537329808524310
Kivimaa, P., 2014. Government-affiliated intermediary organisations as actors in system-level transitions. Research Policy 43, 1370–1380. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.respol.2014.02.007
Lente, H. van, 1993. Promising technology: the dynamics of expectations in technological developments. Eburon, Delft.
Levinthal, D.A. 1998. The slow pace of rapid technological change: gradualism and punctuation in technological change. Industrial and Corporate Change 7, no. 2: 217–47.
Loorbach, D., 2010. Transition management for sustainable development: a prescriptive, complexity-based governance framework. Governance 23, 161–183.
Lovell, H., 2007. The governance of innovation in socio-technical systems: the difficulties of strategic niche management in practice. Science and Public Policy 34, 35–44.
Markard, J., Raven, R.P.J.M., Truffer, B., 2012. Sustainability transitions: An emerging field of research and its prospects. Introduction to the special issue. Research Policy. 41, 995-967
Marvin, S., Bulkeley, H., Mai, L., McCormick, K., Voytenko, P, 2018. Urban living labs. Experimenting with city futures. Routledge
Meelen, T., Frenken, K., Hobrink, S., 2019. Weak spots for car-sharing in The Netherlands? The geography of socio-technical regimes and the adoption of niche innovations. Energy Research & Social Science 52, 132–143. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2019.01.023
Nelson, R.R., Winter, S.G., 1982. An evolutionary theory of economic change. Cambridge, Harvard University Press
Nill, J., Kemp, R., 2009. Evolutionary approaches for sustainable innovation policies: From niche to paradigm? Research Policy 38, 668–680. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.respol.2009.01.011
Raven, R., 2005. Strategic Niche Management for Biomass: A Comparative Study on the Experimental Introduction of Bioenergy Technologies in the Netherlands and Denmark. TUe, Eindhoven.
Raven, R.P.J.M., van den Bosch, S., Weterings, R., 2010. Transitions and strategic niche management. Towards a competence kit for practitioners. The International Journal of Technology Management. Special issue on Social Innovation. 51(1), 57-73
Raven, R., Kern, F., Verhees, B., Smith, A., 2016. Niche construction and empowerment through socio-political work. A meta-analysis of six low-carbon technology cases. Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions 18, 164–180. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eist.2015.02.002
Raven, R.P.J.M., Reynolds, D., Lane, R., Lindsay, J., Kronsell, A., Arunachalam, D., 2021. Households in sustainability transitions: a systematic review and new research avenues. Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions. 40, 87-107
Raven, R., Schot, J., Berkhout, F., 2012. Space and scale in socio-technical transitions. Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions 4, 63–78. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eist.2012.08.001
Raven, R., Sengers, F., Spaeth, P., Xie, L., Cheshmehzangi, A., de Jong, M., 2017. Urban experimentation and institutional arrangements. European Planning Studies 1–24. https://doi.org/10.1080/09654313.2017.1393047
Rip, A., 1995. Introduction of new technology: making use of recent insights from sociology and economics of technology. Technology Analysis & Strategic Management 7, no. 4: 417–31.
Rip, A., Kemp, R., 1998. Technological Change, in: Rayner, S., Malone, E.L. (Eds.), Human Choice and Climate Change: An International Assessment. Battelle Press, Columbus, pp. 327–401.
Schot, J., 1998. The usefulness of evolutionary models for explaining innovation. The case of the Netherlands in the nineteenth century. History and Technology 14: 173–200.
Schot, J, Geels, F., 2007. Niches in evolutionary theories of technical change. A critical survey of the literature. Journal of Evolutionary Economics. 17, 605-622.
Schot, J., Hoogma, R., Elzen, B., 1994. Strategies for shifting technological systems. Futures 26, 1060–1076.
Schot, J., Steinmueller, W.E., 2018. Three frames for innovation policy: R&D, systems of innovation and transformative change. Research Policy 47, 1554–1567. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.respol.2018.08.011
Schraven, D.F.J., Arghandeh Jouneghani, P., Jonkers, H.M., Hertogh, M.J.C.M., 2021. Design to market thinking: exploring the merits of strategic niche management in design thinking. Technology Analysis & Strategic Management 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1080/09537325.2021.1986211
Sengers, F., Raven, R., 2015. Toward a spatial perspective on niche development: The case of Bus Rapid Transit. Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions 17, 166–182. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eist.2014.12.003
Sengers, F., Wieczorek, A.J., Raven, R., 2019. Experimenting for sustainability transitions: A systematic literature review. Technological Forecasting and Social Change 145, 153–164. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2016.08.031
Seyfang, G., Haxeltine, A., 2012. Growing Grassroots Innovations: Exploring the Role of Community-Based Initiatives in Governing Sustainable Energy Transitions. Environ Plann C Gov Policy 30, 381–400. https://doi.org/10.1068/c10222
Seyfang, G., Longhurst, N., 2015. What influences the diffusion of grassroots innovations for sustainability? Investigating community currency niches. Technology Analysis & Strategic Management 1–23. https://doi.org/10.1080/09537325.2015.1063603
Seyfang, G., Smith, A., 2007. Grassroots innovations for sustainable development: Towards a new research and policy agenda. Environmental Politics 16, 584–603. https://doi.org/10.1080/09644010701419121
Sharp, D., Raven, R.P.J.M., 2021. Urban planning by experiment at precinct scale: embracing complexity, ambiguity, and multiplicity. Urban Planning. Vol 6 (1). DOI: 10.17645/up.v6i1.3525
Shove, E., Walker, G., 2007. CAUTION! Transitions ahead: politics, practice, and sustainable transition management. Environment and Planning A 39, 763–770. https://doi.org/10.1068/a39310
Smith, A., Kern, F., 2009. The transitions storyline in Dutch environmental policy. Environmental Politics 18, 78–98. https://doi.org/10.1080/09644010802624835
Smith, A., Kern, F., Raven, R., Verhees, B., 2014. Spaces for sustainable innovation: Solar photovoltaic electricity in the UK. Technological Forecasting and Social Change 81, 115–130. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2013.02.001
Smith, A., Raven, R., 2012. What is protective space? Reconsidering niches in transitions to sustainability. Research Policy 41, 1025–1036. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.respol.2011.12.012
Smith, A., Stirling, A., Berkhout, F., 2005. The governance of sustainable socio-technical transitions. Research Policy 34, 1491–1510. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.respol.2005.07.005
Torrens, J., Johnstone, P., Schot, J., 2018. Unpacking the Formation of Favourable Environments for Urban Experimentation: The Case of the Bristol Energy Scene 28.
Torrens, J., Schot, J., Raven, R., Johnstone, P., 2018. Seedbeds, harbours, and battlegrounds: On the origins of favourable environments for urban experimentation with sustainability. Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eist.2018.11.003
Torrens, J., von Wirth, T., 2021. Experimentation or projectification of urban change? A critical appraisal and three steps forward. Urban Transform 3, 8. https://doi.org/10.1186/s42854-021-00025-1
Truffer, B., Murphy, J.T., Raven, R., 2015. The geography of sustainability transitions: Contours of an emerging theme. Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions 17, 63–72. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eist.2015.07.004
Truffer, B., Rohracher, H., Kivimaa, P., Raven, R.P.J.M., Alkemade, F., Carvalho, L., Feola, G., 2022. A perspective on the future of sustainability transitions research. Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions. 42, 331-339
Turnheim, B., Geels, F.W., 2019. Incumbent actors, guided search paths, and landmark projects in infra-system transitions: Re-thinking Strategic Niche Management with a case study of French tramway diffusion (1971–2016). Research Policy. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.respol.2019.02.002
Ulmanen, J., 2013. Exploring policy protection in biofuel niche development : a policy and strategic niche management analysis of Dutch and Swedish biofuel development, 1970-2010. PhD thesis. TU/e
Verbong, G.P.J., Beemsterboer, S., Sengers, F., 2013. Smart grids or smart users? Involving users in developing a low carbon electricity economy. Energy Policy 52, 117–125. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enpol.2012.05.003
Verhees, B., Raven, R.P.J.M., Veraart, F., Smith, A., Kern, F., 2013. The development of solar PV in the Netherlands: a case of survival in unfriendly contexts. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews. 19, 275-289
Verheul, H., Vergragt, P.J., 1995. Social experiments in the development of environmental technology: a bottom-up perspective. Technology Analysis & Strategic Management 7, 315–326. https://doi.org/10.1080/09537329508524215
Voss, J.-P., Bauknecht, D., Kemp, R., 2006. Reflexive governance for sustainable development. Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, UK; Northampton, MA.
Waes, A. van, Farla, J., Raven, R.P.J.M., 2020. Why do companies’ institutional strategies differ across cities? A cross-case analysis of bike sharing in Shanghai & Amsterdam. Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions. 36, 151-163
Waes, A. van, Nikolaeva, A., Raven, R.P.J.M., 2021. Challenges and dilemmas in strategic urban experimentation. An analysis of four cycling living labs. Technological Forecasting & Social Change. 172, 121004
Weber, K.M., 1999. Experimenting with sustainable transport innovations: a workbook for strategic niche management. Inst. for Prospective Technological Studies, Seville.
Wieczorek, A.J., Raven, R., Berkhout, F., 2015. Transnational linkages in sustainability experiments: A typology and the case of solar photovoltaic energy in India. Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions 17, 149–165. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eist.2015.01.001
Yuana, S., Sengers, F., Boon, W., Hajer, M., Raven, R.P.J.M., 2020. A dramaturgy of critical moments in transitions: understanding the dynamics of conflict in socio-political change. Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions. 37, 156-170.
Zolfagharian, M., Walrave, B., Raven, R.P.J.M., Romme, S., 2019. Studying transitions: past, present and future. Research Policy. 48, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.respol.2019.04.012