Industry in sustainable development: the contribution of regime changes to radical technical innovation in industry

In order to understand how technical change in industry could be stimulated to meet the challenge of sustainable development, this paper discusses three realms in which technical innovation takes place: the cognitive realm of knowledge creation and the principles that guide this process, emphasised in concepts of change such as the technological regime; the physical realm of artefacts and their integration in systems; the realm of social practices, especially those causing technological regime, technological systems and network changes, respectively. Two case studies of tyre construction and metals production are carried out to study regime changes. These cases show that it is useful to apply a narrow regime concept in addition to a technological systems concept and the analysis of social practices of actors involved in industrial innovations.

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