Understanding the emergence of innovation systems is recently put central in research analysing the process of technological change. Especially the key-activities that are important for the build up of an innovation system receive much attention. These are labeled ‘functions of innovation...

This study proposes and tests a number of hypotheses about opinion leaders in the domain of consumer electronics and their use of external search channels. Based on the results of a survey among 1872 consumers, opinion leaders in the domain of consumer electronics are found to most likely be...

Technological options can be regarded as variations in an evolutionary development process. The variations are put forward by their respective technological communities and are selected by technology selectors. Building on the notion of quasi-evolutionary technology development we show how...

The confrontation of values and interests and an impact in the public realm constitutes a broadly recognised political dimension of technological innovation processes. There is, however, a gap between empirical research into these politics of innovation and normative research into their...

Innovation is an interactive learning process which is of special interest for emerging technologies in which complex complementary knowledge from heterogeneous stakeholders is combined. In the emerging phase of technology development a lot of knowledge is tacit and can only be transferred...

Despite its worldwide success, the innovation systems approach is often criticized for being theoretically underdeveloped. This article aims to contribute to the conceptual and methodical basis of the (technological) innovation systems approach. We propose an alteration that improves the...

We examine the view that the success of emerging technologies may be understood using a technological innovation systems analysis, drawing on a systems functions approach. This is done in the context of a case study of the successful diffusion of biomass digestion technology in Germany. We show...

Despite the centrality of niche-regime interaction in the Multi Level Perspective, scant attention has been paid to how exactly this interaction unfolds at the micro-level. This article sets out to deepen insights in niche-regime interaction by focusing on the confrontation between niche and...

We build and empirically test a model that predicts the display of innovative behavior as a function of environmental change, with recent experience and economic status acting as moderators. We start with the model developed by Slevin (1971), which evolved from the so-called innovation boundary....

In this paper we argue that insights in the actor level of sustainability transitions are a necessary next step in the study of sustainability transitions. The paper outlines a first step towards a more systematic analysis of actor strategies in sustainability transitions by linking strategies...