Intermediary actors accelerating socio-technical transitions – hope, hype and actionable insight on their capacities in socio-technical change Seminar 11-12 Continue reading
Welcome to attend an open lecture by Professor Eric von Hippel, a world leading academic on user innovation and democratising Continue reading
We review innovation by citizen users in the early phases of small-scale renewable energy technologies (S-RET) development and examine user innovation and peer assistance in the later phases of S-RET diffusion. Further, we assess research user motivations, diffusion pathways, and peer intermediation while paying particular attention to how the forms of innovative citizen energy communities are changing.
Citizen users play important roles in the acceleration phase of energy transitions. Widespread diffusion requires not only the adoption, but also adaptation, reconfiguration and intermediation of S-RETs. New Internet-based energy communities have emerged and have come to act as key user-side transition intermediaries, helping to expand the markets for S-RET beyond enthusiasts and environmentalists to mainstream consumers.
We address the design issue of mundane and strategic work in collaborative design through an examination of a series of participatory design activities in building a flagship library of the future. Both strategic and mundane work are found to permeate the processes, results, and further uptake of collaborative design outcomes.
Sustainability transitions research presents a new kind of context for strategic design engagements. We explore this in the context of advancing solar photovoltaics in heritage. Value Sensitive Design framework is used to illustrate how a working compromise can be found among the seemingly conflicting values involved in advancing solar in culturally sensitive ways.
Finnish energy and climate policy already features wide experimentation, visioning and long-term roadmaps. Yet transition arenas could help connect these existing instruments, particularly if redesigned for a mid-range timescale. We improved the path creation toolsets and procedures to create more detailed pathways and analyses of pathway step interrelations.
In this paper we elaborate on how practice theories can inform the discussion of experimentation, report specific modes of experimentation and innovation, and derive suggestions for effective policy interventions. We also bring forward a set of generic suggestions for more sensitive, appreciative and effective public policies on sustainability transitions and cast experimentation in a particular and partial role in such policies.
