Understanding Deep Transitions

Schot’s Deep Transitions research proposes, that the way human behaviour and institutions have driven innovation and established systems of provision over the past 250 years, has led to current paradigms of industrial mass production and individualised mass consumption based on intensive use of fossil fuels. This development is what he refers to as the First Deep Transition. To counteract the ecological degradation and social inequality caused by the first Deep Transition, radical change of our contemporary socio-technical systems of food, mobility, energy, healthcare and the rules that have driven their evolution a Second Deep Transition is required.

By historically exploring the dynamics of Deep Transitions, Schot’s research offers insights into the players that influence the emergence, growth and maturity of transformation. He challenges public policy makers’ emphasis on optimisation and economic growth by calling for a more sustainable development model as well as new ways of governing the world. His Deep Transition research offers distinctive implications for policy-making targeted at resolving societal and environmental challenges.

Schot is leading a research programme on Contested Directions of Deep Transitions at the Science Policy Research Unit (SPRU) of the University of Sussex. The five-year programme (2017-2022) has received a philanthropic donation of £1,5million by Baillie Gifford. His Deep Transitions research has resulted in two well received publications (Schot & Kanger, 2018; Kanger & Schot, 2019).  

At the Centre for Global Challenges, Schot is in the process of developing a Global Expert Panel on the 4th industrial revolution and Deep Transitions. The panel aims at shaping the public debate and steering future innovation towards a more sustainable trajectory. The panel will comprise of a group of key people who have expert knowledge of particular socio-technical systems needed to develop rigorous scenarios that will test the Deep Transitions model further.

Navigating Transformation and SDGs: How to make transformations more transformative

In his paper “Three frames for innovation policy: R&D, systems of innovation and transformative change”, written with Edward Steinmueller, Schot encompasses a lot of his thinking and bridges his work on the history of technology, innovation policy and sustainability transitions. Transformation refers to socio-technical system change as conceptualised in the sustainability transitions literature. Schot’s research confronts the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by means of Transformative Innovation Policy (TIP).

To combine academic depth of the developed theory with generating research impact and practical implications for policy makers, Schot has founded and is directing the Transformative Innovation Policy Consortium (TIPC). TIPC is currently set out as a five-year programme (2017-2022) and focusses on policy experimentation, evaluation, capacity building and research agenda development. An overarching ambition is to see the widespread adoption of new transformative innovation policies and practices across the globe.

Co-ordinated by the Science Policy Research Unit (SPRU) and the Centre for Global Challenges, TIPC’s members currently consist of innovation ministries and funding agencies from Colombia, Finland, Norway, South Africa and Sweden. There are additional associate programmes in China, Brazil, Senegal, Ghana, and Kenya.

Sustainability Transitions

Schot is one of the founders of the Sustainability Transitions area of research. Together with Frank Geels and Arie Rip, Schot was instrumental in developing the concept of the multi-level perspective (MLP), which focusses on explaining large scale and long-term shifts – often 50 years or more – from one socio-technical system to another. MLP not only focusses on the relationship between niches (spaces for radical innovation that are protected by specific selection criteria) and regimes (semi-coherent rule-sets directing the behaviour of a set of actors in a single socio-technical system), but also considers external and more remote causes of change. In other words, Schot’s research analyses patterns and mechanisms that generate radical change.

Based on these insights, he was one of the key players in establishing a new framework for research and policy on introducing sustainable technologies – a framework called Strategic Niche Management. This framework proposes that sustainable technologies should be fostered by means of experimentation, as experiments help to establish niches. Schot defines the key features of experiments as network building, learning and expectation management. Strategic Niche Management has evolved into a widely recognised framework amongst academics and policy-makers who aim at implementing sustainable technology. 

Schot additionally focuses on highlighting the importance of contextual factors, policy and the role of users in sustainability transitions. In his latest work, Schot together with Martiskainen and Sovacool, compares the introduction of heat pumps in Finland (almost complete transition) and the United Kingdom (failed/ stalled transition) and provides conceptual insights as well as clear policy implications.  

History of Technology

Johan Schot has been widely recognised and honoured for his contributions to the growth and maturity of the History of Technology field. By means of significant publications on the role of technology in larger historical processes (see full list of publications) and the development of new concepts, Schot pioneered in developing a transnational approach for Europe’s history that integrates technology. His approach on depicting technology’s role in constituting European integration (and fragmentation) was central to the development of numerous large scale international (scholarly) networks and research projects, such as the TIN20 programme (involving 80 scholars), Tensions of Europe network (involving 250-300 scholars), Inventing Europe (digital museum for science and technology) and the Making Europe book series, all developed and led by Schot.

The Making Europe book series, his most recent work in the field, turned into a unique collaborative and interdisciplinary project that bridges the fields of history, social sciences, and science and technology. Over the course of 9 years, the book series, consisting of 6 volumes, has been produced by 13 authors, in cooperation with Tensions of Europe. Together with Phil Scranton, Professor Schot is the series editor and, with Wolfram Kaiser, co-author of the volume Writing the Rules for Europe. Making Europe has been awarded the prestigious Freeman Award by the European Association for the Study of Science and Technology (EASST).