Visual toolbox for system innovation
With a view of improving understanding of new sustainability innovations, the EIT Climate-KIC Transitions Hub has developped a comprehensive resource book for practitioners to map, analyse and facilitate systemic change.
The idea of system innovation has been widely diffused in academia and business to
refer to major transformation in national and regional economies through technological breakthroughs, reorganizations of industries and the implications of a globalised economy.
In the field of climate change, this concept has been deeply applied through the study of socio-technical transition by a number of expert organisations such as the Knowledge Network for System Innovations and Transitions (KSI), the Dutch Research Institute for Transitions (Drift) and the STEPS Centre of the University of Sussex – (Social, Technological and Environmental Pathways to Sustainability). The more practical application of sociotechnical transition, known as transition management, has also been developed by practitioner-based organisations such as Smart CSOs and Forum for the Future.
EIT Climate-KIC has widely applied elements of system innovation and transition
management by combining other general project and innovation management elements. Pioneers into Practice, the Innovator Catalyst and summer schools are some of the key education programmes that have adopted this approach for years. That experience has revealed the difficulties of applying the theories and perspectives to day-to-day practice in certain projects. Practitioners demand adaptable and flexible tools and methods that are easy to transfer to their challenges and problems.
At the same time, throughout these years of intense training, the use of co-operative
learning methods, peer-to-peer activities and modular formats have arisen to be as highly valued by skilled participants who are demanding new learning methods in which experts and mentors are liberated to work more horizontally with practitioners and problem owners.
All these experiences have been the inspiration for this book which aims to play a key part in improving the development, the skills and the application of support system innovation in the field of climate change at both, individual professional level and organizational level.