Grassroots/bottom up innovation: how to facilitate emergence and flourishing Adrian Smith STEPS and SPRU, University of Sussex STEPS Symposium, 24 th September 2009 Brighton

Grassroots/bottom up innovation: how to facilitate emergence and flourishing

Adrian Smith

STEPS and SPRU, University of Sussex

STEPS Symposium, 24 th September 2009

Brighton

Grassroots innovation from a socio-technical perspective Markets Infrastructure Distribution networks Appropriate knowledge Risk and uncertainty strategies Committed and resourceful participants Business/organisational models Social acceptability Capabilities and skills Social values Key technologies Grassroots innovators need considerable social agency in order to align the material, institutional and discursive elements necessary for a ‘working socio-technical practice’: Idealists and entrepreneurs Institutions (norms and rules) Etc. Work that is about knowledge, technique, organisation, economy, and politics Source: RTS

Prevailing innovation systems and wider modes of provision (socio-technical regimes) cast grassroots activity in a disadvantageous light due to a variety of interdependent path-dependencies: Capabilities Economics Vested interests Politics and power Infrastructure Institutions Technological and user cultures A mix of social and technological, material and discursive processes reinforce one another, directing developments along existing pathways, and disadvantaging alternative developments BUT! these regimes are under pressure too (e.g. environmental change, social pressure, demography, development ideologies, internal dynamics and contradictions); instabilities provide opportunities for alternatives policies and programmes for grassroots innovation need also to unsettle these regimes Indifferent mainstream innovation policy aspiration

Prevailing innovation systems and wider modes of provision (socio-technical regimes)

cast grassroots activity in a disadvantageous light due to a variety of interdependent path-dependencies:

Capabilities

Economics

Vested interests

Politics and power

Infrastructure

Institutions

Technological and user cultures

A mix of social and technological, material and discursive processes reinforce one another, directing developments along existing pathways, and disadvantaging alternative developments

BUT!

these regimes are under pressure too (e.g. environmental change, social pressure, demography, development ideologies, internal dynamics and contradictions);

instabilities provide opportunities for alternatives

policies and programmes for grassroots innovation need also to unsettle these regimes

A multi-level perspective on grassroots innovation Source: Geels (2002) Socially inclusive pathways Dominant / excluding modes of provision Diffusion Scaling-up Translation Grassroots innovations Internal dynamics and contradictions Environmental change, social pressure, demography, development ideologies