Joeri H. Wesseling

• PhD Innovation studies
• Professor (Assistant) at Utrecht University

The literature on societal transitions offers many policy recommendations. The implicit assumption is that the civil servants can follow these recommendations and design policies to accelerate transitions. This article shows that governmental transformation is needed to enable civil servants to act upon these, which is currently far from straightfo...

Digital technologies are characterised by pervasiveness, meaning they have numerous application areas with wide-ranging sociotechnical impacts. The Technological Innovation System (TIS) framework analyses the sociotechnical processes leading to and inhibiting innovation. To analyse TIS surrounding digital technologies, i.e. Digital Innovation Syste...

In the currently emerging paradigm of challenge-led and transformative innovation policies, thereis increasing attention for addressing urgent societal problems by formulating clear, timeboundand ambitious mission goals. Completing such transformative mission’s places new demands oninnovation systems, as actors and activities need to align around p...

This paper builds on the literature on mission-oriented innovation policy, governance, transition studies and innovation systems, and develops a structural-functional approach to formatively evaluate mission governance from a Mission-oriented Innovation Systems (MIS) perspective. Central to this MIS approach is the mission arena, a governance struc...

The transition literature argues that governments have an essential role in facilitating societal transitions. The current paper aims to provide a theoretical and empirical understanding of this government role by analyzing the work of entrepreneurial civil servants. These civil servants try to execute transition tasks but are often resisted by the...

Recent times have seen the rediscovery and adaptation of mission-oriented innovation policies (MIPs) for driving transformative change. While such policies seek to mobilise and align stakeholders, little is known about how missions feature in policy coordination processes. We argue that to facilitate the still troublesome operationalisation of MIPs...

SEE BELOW FOR DUTCH SUMMARY. Digitalization is an important key-enabling technology that significantly impacts various sectors, including the energy-intensive processing industries. It is expected that digitalization's impact will not only be techno-economic, but it will also influence the sustainability of industries. The processing industry in th...

Fuel cell electric vehicles (FCEV) are diffusing slowly, well below historical expectations and government targets. To elucidate key factors that may explain this sluggish growth, we identify barriers in three influential markets: Germany, Japan and California. Combining data from 59 interviews and secondary documents, we examine each market from f...

Key Enabling Technologies (KETs) are pervasive groups of technologies expected to enable innovation. They have been promoted as technologies with tremendous potential for boosting economic growth and sustainability in all sectors of society – a claim whose validity remains underexplored. Building on systems thinking and the Multi-Level Perspective,...

The transition literature attributes various transition tasks to government to support socio-technical transitions toward overcoming societal challenges. It is, however, difficult for civil servants to execute these transition tasks, because they partly conflict with Public Administration (PA) traditions that provide legitimacy to their work. This...

This paper shows that the socio-technical barriers that sustainable innovations face, may stem from global regimes. Existing transitions approaches like the Technological Innovation System (TIS), overlook the impact of global regimes on radical innovation. Building on institutional theory, we therefore develop a theoretical framework that captures...

Innovation systems and transitions thinking have become increasingly pervasive in what has been labelled a third generation of challenge-led innovation and transitions policy programmes. Although this upsurge is cause for celebration, we argue that the challenge now lies in developing the evaluation methods that allow for the assessment of strong a...

Building on the literature on Mission-oriented Innovation Policy, governance, transition studies and innovation systems, this paper develops an initial approach to studying the Mission-oriented Innovation System (MIS). Central to the MIS is the concept of a mission arena, in which actors formulate and govern the mission as well as mobilize and dire...

Missions may be regarded as a narrative for challenge-oriented policies, as a rationale for directional policies, and as an instrument for coordinating distributed innovation efforts. While the attention for mission-oriented innovation policy is rising, there are still many questions regarding both the governance and the conduct of missions as well...

Missions may be regarded as a narrative for challenge-oriented policies, as a rationale for directional policies, and as an instrument for coordinating distributed innovation efforts. While the attention for mission-oriented innovation policy is rising, there are still many questions regarding both the governance and the conduct of missions as well...

The literature on transitions recommends that both the government and the civil service should engage with profound societal problems requiring a fundamental socio-technical system change. We analyzed a corpus of 100 publications to cluster the transition tasks that the transitions literature attributes to government. These tasks are set off agains...

The literature on transitions recommends that both the government and the civil service should engage with profound societal problems requiring a fundamental socio-technical system change. We analyzed a corpus of 100 publications to cluster the transition tasks that the transitions literature attributes to government. These tasks are set off agains...

This paper analyzes the impact of globalized industries on the diffusion of promising radical low carbon innovations. We do so by studying the interplay of global socio-technical regimes and technological innovation systems (TIS). Building on institutional theory, we develop a theoretical framework for TIS-regime interaction and apply it to the cas...

We aim for a better conceptualization of mission-oriented innovation policy (MIP). Our starting point is an analytical decomposition of societal problems and innovative solutions based on three dimensions of wickedness: (1) contestation; (2) complexity; and (3) uncertainty. We argue that both problems and solutions can be divergent (contested, comp...

This paper describes the purpose and activities of the Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development’s Mission-oriented Innovation Policy Observatory (MIPO). Missions may be regarded as a narrative for challenge-oriented policies, as a rationale for directional policies engendering change, and as an instrument for governing distributed innovation...

Rather than merely supporting R&D and strengthening innovation systems, the focus of innovation policy is currently shifting towards addressing societal challenges by transforming socio-economic systems. A particular trend within the emerging era of transformative innovation policy is the pursuit of challenge-based innovation missions, such as achi...

Whereas research acknowledges the potential of business model innovation (BMI) to destabilize an existing regime, the impact of a socio-technical system in transition on BMI remains under-conceptualized. To advance work in this direction, this study expands the concept of a business model design space (BMDS), which describes the opportunities and c...

We aim for a better conceptualization of Mission-oriented Innovation Policy (MIP). Our starting point is an analytical decomposition of societal problems and innovative solutions based on the degrees of wickedness regarding three aspects: i) contestation, ii) complexity and iii) uncertainty. We argue that both problems and solutions can be divergin...

Addressing global climate change calls for rapid, large-scale deployment of renewable energy technologies (RETs). Such an accelerated diffusion constitutes a new phenomenon, which challenges existing analytical approaches. The implied fundamental reconfiguration of energy systems will inevitably involve adjoining shifts in the structure of energy m...

Public procurement for innovation (PPI) is a powerful, underutilized demand-side innovation policy instrument. How this instrument can contribute to meeting societal challenges, which require goaloriented transformation of socio-technical systems, remains unclear and is explored in this article. This article draws on the transitions and PPI literat...

Energy-intensive processing industries (EPIs) produce iron and steel, aluminum, chemicals, cement, glass, and paper and pulp and are responsible for a large share of global greenhouse gas emissions. To meet 2050 emission targets, an accelerated transition towards deep decarbonization is required in these industries. Insights from sociotechnical and...

Energy-intensive processing industries (EPIs) such as iron and steel, aluminum, chemicals, cement, glass, and paper and pulp are responsible for a large share of global greenhouse gas emissions. To meet 2050 emission targets, a transition to low carbon, often radical innovations is required, but this process is going slow. Insights from sociotechni...

Energy-intensive processing industries like the concrete industry form the base of the economy and account for a large part of global greenhouse gas emissions. Sectoral transformation to cleaner basic materials is therefore crucial, and institutional pressure to do so is increasing. However, socio-technical studies have not sufficiently addressed t...

Transition studies’ understanding of differences in public policy is limited due to its tendency to focus on single-country cases. This paper assesses differences in plug-in electric vehicle (PEV) policies, comprising RD&D subsidies, infrastructure investments and sales incentives, across 13 countries over the period 2008–2014. I explore three cond...

Transition studies’ understanding of differences in public policy is limited due to its tendency to focus on single-country cases. This paper assesses differences in plug-in electric vehicle (PEV) policies expenditures, comprising RD&D subsidies, infrastructure investments and sales incentives, across 13 countries over the period 2008-2014. I explo...

The ability of firms to influence environmental regulation has largely been overlooked in transition studies. We study how car manufacturers combine and change their innovation and political influence strategies in response to a technology-forcing regulation. We apply a conceptual framework on corporate responses to public innovation policy to the...

We ask how incumbent car manufacturers and their political coalitions changed their political strategy with respect to the Californian zero emission vehicle mandate over the period 2000–2013. Building on the Corporate Political Activities literature we conceptualize firms’ political strategies and their underlying tactics and actions. Our longitudi...

This patent study researches the relation between competitive forces and the continuation of waves of Low Emission Vehicle (LEV) development. The competitive forces included are rivalry, dispersion referring to competition in general, and the presence of new entrants. We identify four waves of LEV development over the period 1990–2010, two of which...

This paper focuses on the relation between large car manufacturers’ incentive and opportunity to innovate and their electric vehicle (EV) business strategies. We analyze how environmental regulation and the firm's incentive (measured by net income) and opportunity to innovate (measured by EV asset position, determined from a combination of patent,...

In this research, we attempt to determine on which properties policy makers should intervene to boost the innovative performance of the Dutch water construction sector. Therefore, we focus on the most promising source of innovation in this sector, i.e. infra projects. We use the innovation systems perspective to analyse the successful innovation pr...