- Email: [email protected]
Engaging with changing spatial realities in TIS research
G Model
ARTICLE IN PRESS
EIST-182; No. of Pages 3
Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions xxx (2015) xxx–xxx
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/eist
Engaging with changing spatial realities in TIS research♦ Lars Coenen a,b,c,∗ a b c
CIRCLE: Centre for Innovation, Research and Competence in the Learning Economy, Lund University, P.O. Box 117, 22100 Lund, Sweden NIFU: Nordic Institute for Studies in Innovation, Research and Education, P.O. Box 5183, Majorstuen, 0302 Oslo, Norway Fellow at the Strategic Theme Institutions of Utrecht University, The Netherlands
a r t i c l e
i n f o
Article history: Received 22 June 2015 Received in revised form 15 July 2015 Accepted 16 July 2015 Available online xxx Keywords: technological innovation systems clean-tech industry geography of transitions
In sustainability transitions research, the TIS approach is often used as analytical framework to study the emergence and growth of clean-tech related industries. In particular it has provided key empirical and theoretical insights to understand the inducement and blocking mechanisms underpinning innovation in clean-tech sectors, largely based on the functional approach (Bergek et al., 2008; Hekkert et al., 2007). Drawing on these insights, TIS research has been explicitly concerned with intervention and policy strategies to enhance the development and built-up of clean-tech sectors. Responding to earlier critiques of being spatially naive (Coenen et al., 2012), recent research has started to address the geographical dimensions of TIS more prominently. This spatial turn is relevant particularly in light of an accelerating global diffusion of clean-tech and the rise of emerging economies, such as China and India, as increasingly important loci of this sector. As a result, we can witness an increasingly global distribution and local clustering of production and innovation networks (Roland Berger, 2012). Indeed, empirical studies have started to relax their initial (default) preoccupation with national TISs. Instead, scholars have begun to engage with multi-scalar TIS (e.g., Gosens et al., 2015; Quitzow, forthcoming) and increasingly acknowledge that location matters for TIS (Wieczorek et al., 2015). In light of these empirical shifts, the aim of this commentary is to discuss how to engage analytically with the changing spatial realities of clean-tech sectors and TIS. Bergek et al. (this issue) provide a useful conceptual starting point to address spatial realities by explicitly considering TIS in various contexts, including geographical context. Still, three critical reflections can be made related to the notion of context. The first is about the way context is treated in light of the ongoing globalization of clean-tech and its innovation activities. Following its earlier methodological tradition (Carlsson et al., 2002), Bergek et al. (this issue) make a rather sharp and definite distinction between what is ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ of the TIS. That is, they apply a delineation of the system through the eyes of the beholder: “context and TIS are always constructs of a specific analytical choice” (p. 7–8). As a result,
♦ The present viewpoint is part and parcel of a debate about the challenges of TIS research in the current issue of EIST. See Truffer (this issue) for an introduction and overview on the different contributions to the debate. ∗ Corresponding author. E-mail address: [email protected] http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.eist.2015.07.008 2210-4224/© 2015 Published by Elsevier B.V.
Please cite this article in press as: Coenen, L., Engaging with changing spatial realities in TIS research. Environ. Innovation Soc. Transitions (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.eist.2015.07.008
G Model EIST-182; No. of Pages 3
ARTICLE IN PRESS L. Coenen / Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions xxx (2015) xxx–xxx
2
(spatial) contexts may still be seen as incidental to a TIS analysis. Put differently, the location(s) of a TIS is treated as external or exogenous to the agents, networks and institutions of the focal TIS. Opposite to a descriptive delineation of the system and its context (Markard and Truffer, 2008), changing spatial realities would require a situationalist understanding of context (Storper, 2009). Here, context is first and foremost defined by “the division of labor and the networks in which the actor finds herself or himself” (p. 13) and in which he/she makes strategic decisions and operates. Such a network-based, rather than analyst-based notion of context is, in my view, more conducive to capture (the structure, dynamics and functioning of) a focal TIS in increasingly globalizing and localizing clean-tech sectors. This situated notion of context concurs with early work in TIS that argues that sector formation processes do not fit neatly with institutionalized territorial boundaries (Carlsson and Stankiewicz, 1991) even though later empirical work may have fallen into a trap of methodological nationalism. Instead it argues for a more relational, network-based notion of TIS (see also Freeman (1991) for a similar argument for IS at large). This implies ‘following the network wherever it leads’ (Binz et al., 2014) using the relational properties of the actors to identify relevant places and spatial levels of a TIS a posteriori, rather than a priori. This does not mean that a network perspective by default presupposes distant, global relations as network may be (and often are) concentrated in a particular locality. Future TIS research should therefore engage with both the proximate and distant geographical contexts. This brings us to a second reflection which follows an earlier observation made on the basis of a literature survey on the emerging geography of sustainability transitions (Hansen and Coenen, forthcoming). While current studies acknowledge that geographical context matters there is little generalisable knowledge and insight about how geographical context matters. While problematizing TIS in geographical contexts indeed opens up a wide variety of new research questions and broader set of empirical examples (Bergek et al. this issue), TIS research could also draw more resourcefully on existing theories to explain why and how geographical contexts matter. That is, rather than adopting a largely empirically-driven inductive strategy to map the local and global geographies of TIS, future research could engage more with extant concepts and mechanisms to explain the emergence and growth of clean-tech sectors (see below). In particular, there is a need to better understand why clean-tech industries are concentrated in space and how this influences TIS formation and functioning. In principle, there are no reasons to assume that this sector would defy the general tendency that innovation processes are facilitated by spatial proximity, clustering and agglomeration economies (Asheim and Gertler, 2005). In fact, one of the key functions of a TIS, the development of positive externalities such as knowledge spillovers and specialised labour markets, typically occur due to co-location and positive proximity effects (Boschma, 2005). However, the classical argument for cluster advantages based on narrow specialisation within specific, geographically concentrated industries is increasingly questioned and scrutinized. This seems particularly pertinent for cleantech given its heterogeneity in terms of firm capabilities and knowledge. Recently, Van den Berge and Weterings (2014) have pointed to the importance of ‘related variety’ for clean-tech industry formation through processes of industrial branching based on different but complementary capabilities rooted in diverse (rather than similar) industrial activities that have been historically present in a region. Third, there is a need to better position TIS studies in their institutional contexts in light of its ambition to be policyrelevant. Whereas current studies often address and call for government interventions, there is a risk that these policy implications tend to be rather generic and overly instrumental. As a result, many recommendations for policy-making end up being somewhat technocratic in nature without sufficiently incorporating the specific opportunities and constraints provided by the sets of institutions in which the TIS is embedded. Here, institutional literature on Varieties of Capitalism may provide a theoretical starting point (Bergek et al. (this issue)) to account for higher order institutional systems in which globalizing clean-tech industries are positioned. However, the dualism between coordinated and liberal market economies that this literature suggests may fit uneasily with the diversity of institutional arrangements and political economies that TIS encounters in an increasingly global economic landscape. This is also a helpful reminder that incorporating concepts and mechanisms from related theories should not be seen as a methodological panacea to cope with changing spatial realities in TIS research. It is no substitute for the insights that fresh, original empirical research brings. Greater theoretical plurality in TIS research may however be warranted to generate and address new and relevant sets of research questions when analyzing the dynamics of globalizing and localizing clean-tech sectors and TIS. Acknowledgment This commentary benefitted from useful comments by Jochen Markard and Jeroen van den Bergh. The usual disclaimer applies. Financial support from VINNOVA, Sweden’s Innovation Agency, is gratefully acknowledged. References Bergek, A., Jacobsson, S., Carlsson, B., Lindmark, S., Rickne, A., 2008. Analyzing the functional dynamics of technological innovation systems: a scheme of analysis. Res. Policy 37 (3), 407–429. Bergek, A., Hekkert, M., Jacobsson, S., Markard, J., Sandén, N., Truffer, B. this issue: Technological Innovation Systems in contexts: towards an improved conceptualization of contextual structures and interaction dynamics. Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions. Carlsson, B., Stankiewicz, R., 1991. On the nature, function and composition of technological systems. J. Evol. Econ. 1 (2), 93–118. Carlsson, B., Jacobsson, S., Holmén, M., Rickne, A., 2002. Innovation systems: analytical and methodological issues. Res. Policy 31 (2), 233–245. Coenen, L., Benneworth, P., Truffer, B., 2012. Toward a spatial perspective on sustainability transitions. Res. Policy 41 (6), 968–979.
Please cite this article in press as: Coenen, L., Engaging with changing spatial realities in TIS research. Environ. Innovation Soc. Transitions (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.eist.2015.07.008
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ARTICLE IN PRESS L. Coenen / Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions xxx (2015) xxx–xxx
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Freeman, C., 1991. Networks of innovators: a synthesis of research issues. Res. Policy 20, 499–514. Gosens, J., Lu, Y., Coenen, L., 2015. The role of transnational dimensions in emerging economy ‘Technological Innovation Systems’ for clean-tech. J. Clean. Prod. 86, 378–388. Hansen, T., Coenen, L., 2014. The geography of sustainability transitions: Review, synthesis and reflections on an emergent research field. Environ. Innovation Soc. Trans. Hekkert, M.P., Suurs, R.A., Negro, S.O., Kuhlmann, S., Smits, R.E.H.M., 2007. Functions of innovation systems: a new approach for analysing technological change. Technol. Forecasting Soc. Change 74 (4), 413–432. Markard, J., Truffer, B., 2008. Technological innovation systems and the multi-level perspective: towards an integrated framework. Res. Policy 37 (4), 596–615. Quitzow, R., forthcoming: Dynamics of a policy-driven market: The co-evolution of technological innovation systems for solar photovoltaics in China and Germany. Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions. Roland Berger 2012. Clean Economy, Living Planet. The Race to the Top of Global Clean Energy Technology Manufacturing 2012. Comissioned by WWF. Storper, M., 2009. Roepke lecture in economic geography—regional context and global trade. Econ. Geo. 85 (1), 1–21. Truffer, B., 2015. Challenges for Technological Innovation Systems Research: Introduction to a debate. Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions, this issue. Van den Berge, M. and Weterings, A. 2014. Relatedness in eco-technological development in European regions. Papers in Evolutionary Economic Geography No. 1413. Utrecht University, Section of Economic Geography. Wieczorek, A.J., Hekkert, M.P., Coenen, L., Harmsen, R., 2015. Broadening the national focus in technological innovation system analysis: the case of offshore wind. Environ. Innovation Soc. Trans. 14, 128–148.
Please cite this article in press as: Coenen, L., Engaging with changing spatial realities in TIS research. Environ. Innovation Soc. Transitions (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.eist.2015.07.008
ARTICLE IN PRESS
EIST-182; No. of Pages 3
Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions xxx (2015) xxx–xxx
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/eist
Engaging with changing spatial realities in TIS research♦ Lars Coenen a,b,c,∗ a b c
CIRCLE: Centre for Innovation, Research and Competence in the Learning Economy, Lund University, P.O. Box 117, 22100 Lund, Sweden NIFU: Nordic Institute for Studies in Innovation, Research and Education, P.O. Box 5183, Majorstuen, 0302 Oslo, Norway Fellow at the Strategic Theme Institutions of Utrecht University, The Netherlands
a r t i c l e
i n f o
Article history: Received 22 June 2015 Received in revised form 15 July 2015 Accepted 16 July 2015 Available online xxx Keywords: technological innovation systems clean-tech industry geography of transitions
In sustainability transitions research, the TIS approach is often used as analytical framework to study the emergence and growth of clean-tech related industries. In particular it has provided key empirical and theoretical insights to understand the inducement and blocking mechanisms underpinning innovation in clean-tech sectors, largely based on the functional approach (Bergek et al., 2008; Hekkert et al., 2007). Drawing on these insights, TIS research has been explicitly concerned with intervention and policy strategies to enhance the development and built-up of clean-tech sectors. Responding to earlier critiques of being spatially naive (Coenen et al., 2012), recent research has started to address the geographical dimensions of TIS more prominently. This spatial turn is relevant particularly in light of an accelerating global diffusion of clean-tech and the rise of emerging economies, such as China and India, as increasingly important loci of this sector. As a result, we can witness an increasingly global distribution and local clustering of production and innovation networks (Roland Berger, 2012). Indeed, empirical studies have started to relax their initial (default) preoccupation with national TISs. Instead, scholars have begun to engage with multi-scalar TIS (e.g., Gosens et al., 2015; Quitzow, forthcoming) and increasingly acknowledge that location matters for TIS (Wieczorek et al., 2015). In light of these empirical shifts, the aim of this commentary is to discuss how to engage analytically with the changing spatial realities of clean-tech sectors and TIS. Bergek et al. (this issue) provide a useful conceptual starting point to address spatial realities by explicitly considering TIS in various contexts, including geographical context. Still, three critical reflections can be made related to the notion of context. The first is about the way context is treated in light of the ongoing globalization of clean-tech and its innovation activities. Following its earlier methodological tradition (Carlsson et al., 2002), Bergek et al. (this issue) make a rather sharp and definite distinction between what is ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ of the TIS. That is, they apply a delineation of the system through the eyes of the beholder: “context and TIS are always constructs of a specific analytical choice” (p. 7–8). As a result,
♦ The present viewpoint is part and parcel of a debate about the challenges of TIS research in the current issue of EIST. See Truffer (this issue) for an introduction and overview on the different contributions to the debate. ∗ Corresponding author. E-mail address: [email protected] http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.eist.2015.07.008 2210-4224/© 2015 Published by Elsevier B.V.
Please cite this article in press as: Coenen, L., Engaging with changing spatial realities in TIS research. Environ. Innovation Soc. Transitions (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.eist.2015.07.008
G Model EIST-182; No. of Pages 3
ARTICLE IN PRESS L. Coenen / Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions xxx (2015) xxx–xxx
2
(spatial) contexts may still be seen as incidental to a TIS analysis. Put differently, the location(s) of a TIS is treated as external or exogenous to the agents, networks and institutions of the focal TIS. Opposite to a descriptive delineation of the system and its context (Markard and Truffer, 2008), changing spatial realities would require a situationalist understanding of context (Storper, 2009). Here, context is first and foremost defined by “the division of labor and the networks in which the actor finds herself or himself” (p. 13) and in which he/she makes strategic decisions and operates. Such a network-based, rather than analyst-based notion of context is, in my view, more conducive to capture (the structure, dynamics and functioning of) a focal TIS in increasingly globalizing and localizing clean-tech sectors. This situated notion of context concurs with early work in TIS that argues that sector formation processes do not fit neatly with institutionalized territorial boundaries (Carlsson and Stankiewicz, 1991) even though later empirical work may have fallen into a trap of methodological nationalism. Instead it argues for a more relational, network-based notion of TIS (see also Freeman (1991) for a similar argument for IS at large). This implies ‘following the network wherever it leads’ (Binz et al., 2014) using the relational properties of the actors to identify relevant places and spatial levels of a TIS a posteriori, rather than a priori. This does not mean that a network perspective by default presupposes distant, global relations as network may be (and often are) concentrated in a particular locality. Future TIS research should therefore engage with both the proximate and distant geographical contexts. This brings us to a second reflection which follows an earlier observation made on the basis of a literature survey on the emerging geography of sustainability transitions (Hansen and Coenen, forthcoming). While current studies acknowledge that geographical context matters there is little generalisable knowledge and insight about how geographical context matters. While problematizing TIS in geographical contexts indeed opens up a wide variety of new research questions and broader set of empirical examples (Bergek et al. this issue), TIS research could also draw more resourcefully on existing theories to explain why and how geographical contexts matter. That is, rather than adopting a largely empirically-driven inductive strategy to map the local and global geographies of TIS, future research could engage more with extant concepts and mechanisms to explain the emergence and growth of clean-tech sectors (see below). In particular, there is a need to better understand why clean-tech industries are concentrated in space and how this influences TIS formation and functioning. In principle, there are no reasons to assume that this sector would defy the general tendency that innovation processes are facilitated by spatial proximity, clustering and agglomeration economies (Asheim and Gertler, 2005). In fact, one of the key functions of a TIS, the development of positive externalities such as knowledge spillovers and specialised labour markets, typically occur due to co-location and positive proximity effects (Boschma, 2005). However, the classical argument for cluster advantages based on narrow specialisation within specific, geographically concentrated industries is increasingly questioned and scrutinized. This seems particularly pertinent for cleantech given its heterogeneity in terms of firm capabilities and knowledge. Recently, Van den Berge and Weterings (2014) have pointed to the importance of ‘related variety’ for clean-tech industry formation through processes of industrial branching based on different but complementary capabilities rooted in diverse (rather than similar) industrial activities that have been historically present in a region. Third, there is a need to better position TIS studies in their institutional contexts in light of its ambition to be policyrelevant. Whereas current studies often address and call for government interventions, there is a risk that these policy implications tend to be rather generic and overly instrumental. As a result, many recommendations for policy-making end up being somewhat technocratic in nature without sufficiently incorporating the specific opportunities and constraints provided by the sets of institutions in which the TIS is embedded. Here, institutional literature on Varieties of Capitalism may provide a theoretical starting point (Bergek et al. (this issue)) to account for higher order institutional systems in which globalizing clean-tech industries are positioned. However, the dualism between coordinated and liberal market economies that this literature suggests may fit uneasily with the diversity of institutional arrangements and political economies that TIS encounters in an increasingly global economic landscape. This is also a helpful reminder that incorporating concepts and mechanisms from related theories should not be seen as a methodological panacea to cope with changing spatial realities in TIS research. It is no substitute for the insights that fresh, original empirical research brings. Greater theoretical plurality in TIS research may however be warranted to generate and address new and relevant sets of research questions when analyzing the dynamics of globalizing and localizing clean-tech sectors and TIS. Acknowledgment This commentary benefitted from useful comments by Jochen Markard and Jeroen van den Bergh. The usual disclaimer applies. Financial support from VINNOVA, Sweden’s Innovation Agency, is gratefully acknowledged. References Bergek, A., Jacobsson, S., Carlsson, B., Lindmark, S., Rickne, A., 2008. Analyzing the functional dynamics of technological innovation systems: a scheme of analysis. Res. Policy 37 (3), 407–429. Bergek, A., Hekkert, M., Jacobsson, S., Markard, J., Sandén, N., Truffer, B. this issue: Technological Innovation Systems in contexts: towards an improved conceptualization of contextual structures and interaction dynamics. Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions. Carlsson, B., Stankiewicz, R., 1991. On the nature, function and composition of technological systems. J. Evol. Econ. 1 (2), 93–118. Carlsson, B., Jacobsson, S., Holmén, M., Rickne, A., 2002. Innovation systems: analytical and methodological issues. Res. Policy 31 (2), 233–245. Coenen, L., Benneworth, P., Truffer, B., 2012. Toward a spatial perspective on sustainability transitions. Res. Policy 41 (6), 968–979.
Please cite this article in press as: Coenen, L., Engaging with changing spatial realities in TIS research. Environ. Innovation Soc. Transitions (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.eist.2015.07.008
G Model EIST-182; No. of Pages 3
ARTICLE IN PRESS L. Coenen / Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions xxx (2015) xxx–xxx
3
Freeman, C., 1991. Networks of innovators: a synthesis of research issues. Res. Policy 20, 499–514. Gosens, J., Lu, Y., Coenen, L., 2015. The role of transnational dimensions in emerging economy ‘Technological Innovation Systems’ for clean-tech. J. Clean. Prod. 86, 378–388. Hansen, T., Coenen, L., 2014. The geography of sustainability transitions: Review, synthesis and reflections on an emergent research field. Environ. Innovation Soc. Trans. Hekkert, M.P., Suurs, R.A., Negro, S.O., Kuhlmann, S., Smits, R.E.H.M., 2007. Functions of innovation systems: a new approach for analysing technological change. Technol. Forecasting Soc. Change 74 (4), 413–432. Markard, J., Truffer, B., 2008. Technological innovation systems and the multi-level perspective: towards an integrated framework. Res. Policy 37 (4), 596–615. Quitzow, R., forthcoming: Dynamics of a policy-driven market: The co-evolution of technological innovation systems for solar photovoltaics in China and Germany. Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions. Roland Berger 2012. Clean Economy, Living Planet. The Race to the Top of Global Clean Energy Technology Manufacturing 2012. Comissioned by WWF. Storper, M., 2009. Roepke lecture in economic geography—regional context and global trade. Econ. Geo. 85 (1), 1–21. Truffer, B., 2015. Challenges for Technological Innovation Systems Research: Introduction to a debate. Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions, this issue. Van den Berge, M. and Weterings, A. 2014. Relatedness in eco-technological development in European regions. Papers in Evolutionary Economic Geography No. 1413. Utrecht University, Section of Economic Geography. Wieczorek, A.J., Hekkert, M.P., Coenen, L., Harmsen, R., 2015. Broadening the national focus in technological innovation system analysis: the case of offshore wind. Environ. Innovation Soc. Trans. 14, 128–148.
Please cite this article in press as: Coenen, L., Engaging with changing spatial realities in TIS research. Environ. Innovation Soc. Transitions (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.eist.2015.07.008