M.P. Hekkert

Utrecht University | UU · Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development

Innovation systems take a holistic perspective to frame the dynamics that influence the emergence of innovation. Such systems consider a wide range of actors, institutions and networks to be the key structural building blocks. These structural elements interact, generating positive or negative feedback loops. Innovation systems initially emphasized...

Literature on mission-specific innovation systems (MIS) highlights the crucial role of directionality when achieving sustainability transitions, while diversity literature emphasizes the need to keep diverse directions open. Like directionality, diversity is created by innovation system actors to tackle the complex and uncertain nature of transitio...

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...

The concept of circular economy (CE) is proposed to lead humanity toward a sustainable future. Public authorities increasingly build on CE narratives. The progress of private sector actors is key to enable more circular resource flows. Still, the world falls far short from becoming circular and large‐scale implementation of CE in actual problem–sol...

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...

The paper shows that visions of the future can be used as a predictor of cooperation and division between actors in their efforts to shape the institutional environment, specifically policy in socio‐technical systems. Accordingly, the paper suggests a new method to analyze visions: a virtual solution space in which visions can be grouped according...

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...

Markets for plant-based protein products are experiencing unprecedented growth. However, the extent to which the wider diffusion of plant-based protein products is beneficial to human and planetary health is still a contested issue in public discourses. The study of media frames for plant-based protein products can serve as a basis for approaches o...

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...

The circular economy has been proposed to transform global textile supply chains which are currently challenged by a complex nexus of sustainability issues related to the dominant fast fashion trend. Research on circular economy in the textile sector often focuses on businesses or consumers as key enablers in circular transitions, yet it treats the...

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...

Innovative entrepreneurs often need to engage in different system building activities in order to overcome the barriers to successful market introduction of an innovative technology. There is a large body of literature on individual system building strategies by single actors, as well as on the collective nature of system building by different acto...

Sustainability challenges require experimenting with various types of sustainability innovations. Local and regional context conditions influence their diffusion. Our research question is: what are pathways for the transfer of sustainability innovations to other locations, and how do local and regional conditions enable this transfer? We use the no...

CONTEXT As elsewhere in Western Europe, large scale intensive agriculture dominates the landscape of the Netherlands. Grassland for dairy production occupies more than a quarter of its land surface. The high production intensity on conventionally farmed grassland leads to poor habitat quality, resulting in sharp declines in bird and insect numbers....

Renewable energy sectors are becoming increasingly globalized with lead firms appropriating value on a global scale: This creates challenges for nations seeking to anchor some of the value locally through indigenous industrial development. Since lead firms select their suppliers for a given deployment project, national governments can set incentive...

Agri-food system transitions are a considerable challenge requiring stakeholder alignment on what changes need to be made and how. When stakeholders do not agree on the goals or methods of a transition, this can be a serious obstacle to success. This paper analyzes 42 vision documents for the future of Dutch agriculture from a broad range of stakeh...

The decarbonizing the heat sector is a major challenge in the energy transition in Germany and elsewhere. District heating systems could play an important role in this context. However, the diffusion of the technology in Germany has been very slow. The paper presents a comprehensive analysis of the technological innovation system (TIS) to enhance u...

There is no evidence-based discussion on the intended and unintended global social impacts, such as changes in employment, of the European Union's (EU) transition towards the Circular Economy (CE). Consequently, its ethical implications are nebulous. Therefore, this paper assesses CE-induced global employment shifts using the example of the apparel...

The technological innovation systems (TIS) literature and the strand of system building studies explain the role of networks in the strategic creation of favorable institutional conditions for sustainability transitions. To better understand collective system building, it is important to delve into the formation of networks composed of diverse orga...

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...

Heat pump technology has the potential to substantially increase the efficiency of domestic space heating which is currently based on boiler technology. Although the heat pump has reached technological maturity, its implementation remains hampered by numerous non-technological barriers in many countries. This paper presents an assessment of the bar...

While it is well known where the best entrepreneurial ecosystems can be found in general, such information is missing in the case of sustainability entrepreneurial ecosystems. These are entrepreneurial ecosystems with high shares of startups that are active in industries which address the Sustainable Development Goals through innovation. Not knowin...

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...

Regenerative agriculture is considered a more sustainable alternative to current farming practices, but it is not yetwell defined. Building on scientific literature we have defined regenerative agriculture as ‘an approach to farming thatuses soil conservation as the entry point to regenerate and contribute to multiple provisioning, regulating and s...

Circular economy (CE) and sharing economy (SE) are much discussed concepts but potential links between them have not been examined systematically so far. The concepts’ popularity coupled with a lack of definitional consensus may hinder their potential to advance sustainability transitions. Hence, the first comparative bibliometric study of these tw...

This article analyzes the transition towards second-generation (2G) biofuels during the 2005–2018 period in Brazil, which is a world leader of first-generation (1G) biofuels. In the case of Brazil 2G technologies are associated with sugarcane and the technologies of this transition considered in this article are enzymatic hydrolysis and energy cane...

This paper investigates the co-evolution of industry formation, innovation systems and context over time through an analysis of offshore wind in the Netherlands and Norway. We compare these two countries because of their historically weak domestic offshore wind markets, long legacies in the oil and gas (O&G) and maritime industries and active parti...

A new era of transformative and mission-oriented innovation policy has arisen due to the urgency of grand societal challenges, such as climate change. This new era requires a massive restructuring of societies, industries and consumption and will depend on, in part, new technologies and a high degree of coordination between the industry, civil soci...

The circular economy is argued to hold great promise for achieving sustainability. Yet, there is a dearth of research about what a circular future may look like. To address this gap, this paper proposes different plausible scenarios for a circular future, using a 2 × 2 scenario matrix method developed through a thought experiment and a focus group....

Sustainability transitions are commonly considered impossible without regime change. Theoretical work on regime change has mainly focused on niches and landscapes and less on change ‘from within’. Empirical analysis helps theorising endogenous regime change. Conceptualising regimes as semi-coherent entities composed of multiple ‘institutional logic...

In this paper, we study sustainability transitions in agriculture and highlight several elements that distinguish transition dynamics in this sector from those more frequently studied in the socio-technical transitions literature. Our assumption is that ecological dimensions of agricultural systems affect transition dynamics. We illustrate this by...

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...

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) agreed by the United Nations are a call to action for policy-makers around the globe to tackle grand societal challenges. Sustainability start-ups can help meet some of the most pressing challenges. Regions of start-up activity are commonly referred to as entrepreneurial ecosystems (EEs), although the share...

Novel technologies require the support of larger technological innovation systems (TIS). A key feature of innovation systems are system resources - collective structures such as common standards, support programs, shared expectations or testing facilities all actors can use. System resources emerge either uncoordinated or as a result of strategic a...

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...

This paper analyzes the logics that underlie two distinct approaches to energy-efficiency retrofits in the Netherlands. It is explained how these logics lead to differing viewpoints on problems and solutions on the road to scale-up of such retrofits. For this, the paper makes use of the institutional logics approach. The institutional logics approa...

This research addresses the challenging question of how to support industry formation policies without relying on expensive domestic market formation strategies. Innovation systems literature classically focuses on the need to support home market development to encourage both technological diffusion and generation of a promising technology. However...

Even though the food system is responsible for a significant part of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and a transition to a sustainable food system is needed, the growing body of literature on sustainability transitions has paid little attention to the food processing sector. We expect transition dynamics in the food processing sector to diffe...

This white paper presents an analysis of the business models of circular start-ups in the Netherlands. It is the product of a research project funded by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO), looking into the roles of circular start-up hubs in the transition to a circular economy (CE); and conducted by Utrecht University’s Cope...

The circular economy (CE) concept is much-heralded among policy-makers, scholars and industry professionals as an accelerated pathway towards sustainability. This move away from the dominant linear system where products are discarded at the end of product lifecycle is deemed necessary since it is the main cause of an accelerated resource consumptio...

In the field of sustainability transitions, temporality has recently received increased attention, specifically with regard to understanding acceleration of transitions. Acceleration of sustainability transitions is needed, to minimize the risks of global crises, and so the question is how these transitions can be accelerated. To answer this questi...

Even though much attention has been given to barriers related to implementing circular business models, so far, no studies have focused on how the barriers differ between business models. Ignoring the possibility of such differences could lead to unjustified generalizations about the barriers to implementing circular business models (CBMs). We iden...

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...

The Technological Innovation Systems (TIS) approach provides a conceptual framework to find ways to stimulate technological innovation. It prescribes that interventions should be focused on alleviating systemic problems that cause unsatisfactory system performance. Although literature provides guidelines to identify systemic problems and formulate...

The scholarly literature has so far paid limited attention to responsibility by commercial entrepreneurs. This paper compares responsible entrepreneurship (RE) and corporate social responsibility (CSR) scholarship in order to identify future fields of research. For this purpose, we assess the strengths and weaknesses of extant RE scholarship throug...

The circular economy concept is much discussed in the European Union (EU), but only limited progress has been accomplished so far regarding its implementation. Most scholarly studies blame this on various technological barriers. Our work rebuts these studies. We present the first large-N-study on circular economy barriers in the EU (208 survey resp...

The sustainability challenge requires experimentation with innovations, followed by an upscaling process towards a broader regime change in the long term. In Europe we observe various regional hotspots for sustainability experimentation which suggests that there are favorable spatial contexts. Little is known about why different kinds of experiment...

Collaborating with public research organizations (PROs) helps SMEs acquire the knowledge and skills they need to successfully innovate. But do they also help SMEs reduce their exposure to involuntary knowledge misappropriation and legitimacy deficits? Building from transaction economics and population ecology theories, we hypothesize that innovativ...

The circular economy concept has gained momentum both among scholars and practitioners. However, critics claim that it means many different things to different people. This paper provides further evidence for these critics. The aim of this paper is to create transparency regarding the current understandings of the circular economy concept. For this...

Novel technologies require the support of larger technological innovation systems (TIS). A key feature of innovation systems are system resources-collective structures such as common standards, public support programs, shared expectations or testing facilities all actors can use. System resources emerge either uncoordinated or as a result of strate...

Companies that wish to launch innovative sustainability technologies can collaborate in strategic networks of actors from industry, government and research institutes to pro-actively build a business ecosystem around their new technology. This is called collective system building. In this paper, we examine how to effectively manage networks for col...

The circular economy concept has gained momentum both among scholars and practitioners. However, critics claim that it means many different things to different people. This paper provides further evidence for these critics. The aim of this paper is to create transparency regarding the current understandings of the circular economy concept. For this...

The literature on socio-technical transitions pays increasing attention to the role of incumbent firms during transitions. These firms have been found to variably further, delay, or to ignore transitions towards a more sustainable society. Yet, it remains unclear which factors cause incumbents to display different modes of behavior during transitio...

The sustainability challenge requires various forms of experimentation with inventions, which may lead to an upscaling process in which the invention and its applications will spread to other users and regions in the world. However, many experiments fail. In this paper, we explore the success factors for sustainability experiments in their contribu...

For radical innovation to become successful the substitution of established practices are essential. Nevertheless, in the innovation literature novelty is often at the center and only little attention is paid to the influence of established technologies and underlying routines. This paper aims to contribute to this gap by increasing the understandi...

http://www.pbl.nl/sites/default/files/cms/publicaties/pbl-2016-circular-economy-measuring-innovation-in-product-chains-2544.pdf

In order to facilitate the transition to electricity industries with low CO2 emissions, it is important to understand which firms invest in renewable energy technologies. This study concentrates on the heterogeneous characteristics of investors in wind power that are embedded in the investors’ dynamic capabilities. Data on 617 investors in the Swed...

The innovation systems approach offers a framework to identify what inhibits the generation, diffusion and implementation of innovations. It prescribes that interventions should target systemic problems that inhibit the system from functioning well. In current literature, systemic problems are typically identified independent from each other, after...

This paper focuses on the strategies of incumbents that seek to develop discontinuous innovations within the boundaries of a mature innovation system. Mature innovation systems do not provide support for these discontinuous innovations. This article focuses on exploring why incumbents in these setting engage in discontinuous innovation and what str...

For their technological sustainability innovations to become successful, entrepreneurs can strategically shape the technological field in which they are involved. The technological innovation systems (TISs) literature has generated valuable insights into the processes which need to be stimulated for the successful development and implementation of...

The Dutch (!) report can be found on: http://www.pbl.nl/sites/default/files/cms/publicaties/pbl-2016-circulaire-economie-innovatie-meten-in-de-keten_2249.pdf