Technological Transition and Adaptive Cycle
I would like to start my blog with an excerpt from an essay written 4 years ago during my studies at Aalto University. The essay was written as a final task for Systems Thinking course and it provided a good (though as I see it now a bit superficial) example of the way different theories could be combined to create a new tool for tackling sustainability challenges. This excerpt provides a brief description of technological transition diagram and an adaptive cycle from systems theory, as well as the way they can be combined.
Technological Transition
The technological transition (TT) (Figure 1.) is similar to evolutionary process and should be viewed from dynamic multi-level perspective. The technological transition figure consists of three levels: Technological niches, Sociotechnical (ST) regimes and Landscape developments. The first level in the bottom is technological niches. Radical innovations are generated on this level, they are usually very expensive and low efficient, therefore they cannot compete with existing mainstream solutions. Many of those niches are doomed and will never reach mainstream, but the ones that break through will constitute sociotechnical regimes in the near future. The middle level is sociotechnical regimes, where incremental innovations are generated. Sociotechnical regimes represent current technological development, where ‘the community of engineers searches in the same direction’ (Geels, 2001) in close cooperation with infrastructure, policies, markets, culture, user practices. This is the level of established technologies, therefore radical innovations are hard to implement here. The third and the highest level is the sociotechnical landscape, which represents ‘material context of society, e.g. the material and spatial arrangements of cities, factories, highways, and electricity highways’ (Geels, 2001). This level is the most stable and changes occur very slowly.
The technological transition happens when ST-regimes are weakened by some internal or external pressure and, as a result, radical innovations can reach and change it. “Radical innovations break out of the niche-level when ongoing processes at the levels of regime and landscape create a ‘window of opportunity’. These windows may be created by tensions in ST-regimes or by shifts in the landscape which put pressure on the regime” (Geels, 2001). TT also changes regulation, infrastructure, symbolic meaning in sociotechnical regime. ‘Once established, a new sociotechnical regime may contribute to changes on the landscape level’ (Geels, 2001).
The challenge is that this figure is only illustrative and does not have any concrete measurement of time to predict when the ‘window of opportunity’ is more likely to open. To solve this problem, the adaptive cycle must be added as a relative time measure, to help indicate the stage of development within both ST-regimes and landscape.
Adaptive Cycle
The adaptive cycle (AC) (Figure 2.) shows the development of the system and can be compared with a year in nature. As the year in nature consists of four seasons, AC consists of four different functions: release (Ω), reorganization (α), exploitation (r) and conservation (K), which are following each other always in the same order (except some specific cases) and form a closed loop. The main difference is that all seasons last for the same three months (according to calendar), while the duration of periods between AC functions can vary depending on a particular system and conditions.
There are two main periods of AC, a long period of ‘slow accumulation and transformation of resources (from exploitation to conservation, or r to K)’, and a short period ‘that creates opportunities for innovation (from release to reorganization, or Ω to α)’ (Holling, 2001). ‘During the slow sequence from exploitation to conservation, connectedness and stability increase and capital is accumulated’ (Holling, 2001). In contrast, the phase from Ω to α ‘is inherently unpredictable and highly uncertain. At that stage, the previously accumulated mutations, inventions, external invaders, and capital can become re-assorted into novel combinations, some of which nucleate new opportunity’ (Holling, 2001).
The adaptive cycle cannot provide an exact time measurement, such as years, decades or centuries, for TT; but AC can indicate the position of the social system development and preparedness for the radical innovation, thus helping predict the opportunity window and guide the innovation towards ST-regimes.
References
- Frank W. Geels (2001). Technological transitions as evolutionary reconfiguration processes: a multi-level perspective and a case-study. Centre for Studies of Science, Technology and Society, University of Twente, TWRC-D-311, P.O. Box 217, 7500 AE Enschede, The Netherlands. Research Policy 31 (2002) 1257–1274
- C. S. Holling (2001). Understanding the Complexity of Economic, Ecological, and Social Systems. Department of Zoology, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida 32611, USA. Ecosystems (2001) 4: 390–405
