Jonas Colen Ladeia Torrens, 06 June 2022

Actors and Users

0PDE05 Transformative approaches to energy, mobility and smart cities

 Daily agenda
Tuesday, 08 June:

10:30-11:15 MLP

11:30-12:15 - 13:00-13:45 CWS MLP

12:15 - 13:00 Lunch

13:45-14:15 Actors & users

14-15 - 15:30 CWS Actors & users

15:30 - 16:15 Re ection & feedback

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Actors and Agency

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Key observations about agency

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Key observations about agency

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Multi-actor network
Geels 2002:

• These actors are also guided by

rules

• Socio-technical regimes: ‘semi-

coherent set of rules carried out
by di erent social groups’

• Orientation and co-ordination of

relevant actor groups

• Dynamic stability, around

incremental changes

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Agency

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Actors or Agents

An entity with agency:

• Individual or organisation

• Can have beliefs about life, other actors

• Can have desires to achieve some goal

• Belief and desires - the basis of agents’ https://data.pbl.nl/api/embed/infographic/data/nl/ovg12/009i/03/009i_ovg12_03_nl.pdf

intentional actions

• Their positions secure a lot of agency

but also constrain their actions

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 l &
u ra ed
l
P te st
o n
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Actors in STS

• Interpretative & creative (but also potentially resistive)

• Socially construct meaning & cognitive frameworks

• Domestication and social embedding of new technology

• Symbolic work of transforming culture;

• Importance of user routines, choices

HOWEVER:

• Heroic storylines, singular viewpoint analyses

• Focus on ‘Micro’ - Neglect of social structures and the role of power

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Evolutionary economics
After Grin et al. 2010

Focus on long term broader patterns of variation, selection &

retention in the entire population (of e.g. rms), economic
processes & mechanisms

• Macro-view: de ne technological regimes to understand the

process of coordination & structural embeddedness of actors

• Economic operationalisation:

Market as a selection environment, actors - bounded rationality,

variation - blind stochastic process, selected product retained

• Sociological operationalisation:

 - Variation derives from the search process, partially intentional,

the outcome of deliberate processes of the search for solutions

- Agency constrained by & embedded in regimes contra STS

- Institutions of various sorts constrain & enable actors to

interpret reality

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Evolutionary economics
Criticism:

- recognition of broader structures but neglect of their enabling aspects

 - bounded-rationality contra with human cognition

 - deterministic connotations

 - excessive focus on technology

 - variation simpli ed and limited to technical developments

 - focus on rms and products

Creative and interpretative => quasi-evolutionary theory

- Actors anticipating, giving meaning, searching, learning, consciously diverting from routines and rule-regimes

- The regimes are shared by population, have coordinating role, provide general direction, retention structures,
selection environment for local practices, contain routines and rules that are shared

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Actors in socio-technical systems

• Maintain and reproduce socio-technical systems

• Pursue own strategies, have leeway but are constraint (though not fully determined) by institutional structures they are
embedded in

Their actions are:

-Deliberate and strategic

-Value driven

-Dependent on available resources

• Do not work in isolation

• Their actions, interactions and alliances can trigger or obstruct systemic change

• Their roles can change over time and may depend on a phase of a change

 • Can be analyzed using a variety of categories

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Strategies

• Special intentions formed by an agent on the basis

of beliefs about what is the right solution given their
values, capacities and opportunities (de Haan &
Rotmans 2018)

• Determined by the actor's interpretation of the

structures, and this depends on their relationship to
these con gurations

• Are based on (Farla, 2012):

- Goals + Activities they pursue + Resources

✓ Tangible (e.g. equipment, machinery, nance,

human resources) https://open.lib.umn.edu/app/uploads/sites/11/2015/04/9a4da6d9a818f3c616ed228c1f2964f5.jpg

✓ Intangible (e.g. technological know-how, the status

or reputation of an actor, its social contacts &
network ties)

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MLP-based typology
(Geels, 2012, Smith et al. 2005)

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Incumbency
Recent critiques, Turnheim and Sovaccol 2020

Tendency to assume incumbents act as villains, who resist, slow down or

prevent transition e orts.

1) Need for more attention to di erent actor types

2) Variety of actor strategies within/across groups

3) Strategies are temporary

4) Resources are varied which can support transformative change

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Users

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Content

1. What is user innovation?

2. Why is it interesting?

3. User innovation and policy

4. User innovation in sustainability transitions

5. User innovation in a multi-level perspective

6. Assignment

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Linear model of innovation
User as a choice maker in the market
€€€ Social benefits

Science invents, industry adapts and society conforms

▪ Linear, well defined set of stages, science first, critical, driver of innovation
▪ Innovation = applied science, investment in future welfare
▪ Policy based on linear model – market failure, funds for basic research
However
▪ Generalised chain of causalities applied to minority of innovations
▪ Research/Supply driven – no demand (e.g. walkman) / technology push
▪ Ignores feedbacks and loops between stages
▪ Not all innovations are radical
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However users…

• Are not passive recipients of technology but active & important actors shaping & negotiating
meanings of technology

• Play equally important role in producing technologies as powerful incumbents (Oudshoorn &
Pinch, 2002)

• Already in the 50’s, economist Eric Von Hippel noticed that many innovations are actually
developed by users (Von Hippel, 1986). He coined the term ‘lead user’ to connote a type of
consumer (e.g. individual end-user or user community) or intermediate user (e.g. rm)

✓ Experiences some need before the rest of the market does

✓ Stands to gain disproportionally from a solution to that need

✓ Develops that solution

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User-Innovators thus:

• … are consumers or rms that expect to bene t from using a novel product or
service they develop…whereas (!) supliers/manufacturer-innovators expect to bene t
from selling the novel product or service they develop

• … have highly speci c needs that:

✓ cannot be addressed e ectively with the standardised available market solutions

✓ are so new & the eventual market size still so unclear, that no supplier has emerged to address them
yet

• …are esp. common in computer games, software, music, clothing, automobiles,

bicycles, extreme sports

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User as a source of innovation
User innovation

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEI3sFRo5Js
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Why is user innovation interesting?
Democratising innovation

• Drivers:

• More diverse markets

• More varied user needs

• Wide availability of tools for innovation

• Improvements in ICT, IoT powerful!

• Costs of communication & design go down

• Break down of traditional division of 


labour b’n innovators & customers

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ICT as an enabler

• Internet enables users to:

• Share their novel products & services globally
• Come together in user-communities that develop innovations that compete with or complement
manufacturer innovations
• Access specialist knowledge like never before (google patents etc.)
• Source capital for R&D via crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter or blockchain
• Freeware computer aided design tools allow users to:
• Create novel designs
• 3D printing helps users to:
• Create prototypes & small-series nal products

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User innovation and policy

• Democratization of innovation has important implications for innovation policy

• Innovation policy has so far focused on stimulating the activities of traditional
manufacturer innovation in specific industrial sectors (Top Sector approach,
Triple Helix)

• …while it is clear that traditional manufacturer innovation is not where all the
action happens

• Various attempts by researchers to establish how much user innovation goes

on, and its economic significance

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User innovation and private sector

• Users can create a marketable product of their own solutions if they think there
are enough other users with the same need, & establish start-up companies
(‘user-entrepreneurship’)

• …but many existing companies, aware of the specialist knowledge that users
have, also try to harvest the power of user innovation by consulting ‘their’
users & integrating them into the design process (‘user integration’)

• Internet again makes it easier for firms to locate & contact their users

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End user integration

Selected methods

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End user integration
Innovation ‘phase’

booking.com

Extreme sports

SWTOR game

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User innovation is nothing new

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“Rise of the User” in the academic literature

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Enabling user participation
Participation ladder (Rathenau, 2015)

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 …but what about sustainability?

• Typically, users - passive adopters of sustainable products & services developed by

rms

• In research, most attention to the (non-)di usion of these sustainable products &
services

• Assumption: user innovation & user integration, innovation & entrepreneurship o er

great but untapped potential for smart, sustainable & inclusive growth…

• We need a framework to systematise this knowledge, roles and potential - focus of

this project

• …not to replace company-driven sustainability innovations, but to add them (“all

hands on deck”)

• => EUINNOVATE: http://eu-innovate.com/

End User Integration, Innovation & Entrepreneurship

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Appropriate technology approach

Dein Wechsel hier bedeutet den Anfang

dort.

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EU-InnovatE
Selected results

• User innovators are increasingly recognised as potential sources of sustainable

innovation (e.g. Shove, 2003; Rohracher, 2005; Pettersen et al., 2013)

• Process model of sustainable entrepreneurship:

• “the development of a triple bottom line solution takes place successively,

not simultaneously, to reduce the complexity of the challenges”

• Positive spillover e ects in di erent domains

• Role of secondary stakeholders in sust. innovation

• General typology of role of users in sustainable 


Innovations (Verhees & Verbong)

• Typology of role of collective users in transition 


processes (Schot & Kanger; Schot, Kanger & Verbong)
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Users as barriers to innovation
BUT…user involvement is not necessarily positive for the innovation process:
users can be barriers, too

“Friezen ten strijde tegen moderne

windreuzen
Windturbines als splijtzwam van
gemeenschappen” (VK, 09-02-2017)

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… to complicate it further
Non-users also matter

- Access to technology seen as necessarily desirable

- Concern about the social inequalities that may arise if the 'digital divide' is allowed to
grow - expressed by some heads of state

- Assumption that non-use or ‘lack of access’ is a de ciency to be remedied underlies

many policies

- ‘Increasing access’ - a policy challenge to be met in order to realise the economic

potential of the technology

BUT:

- By focusing on use we implicitly accept promises of technology & capitalisations of its

production

- The entire world does not share a single time line of development, with some groups
ahead of others but with everyone on the same path.

- Non-use of technology does not always & necessarily involves inequality & deprivation

Wyatt et al (2002)
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Taxonomy of non-users
Two-dimensional matrix with a binary division
• The “excluded” don’t
have access, regardless
if they want it or not
• The “expelled” are
former users who don’t
have access any more
• The “resisters”: people
not willing to use a
technology
• The “rejecters”: former
users who decided not
to use the technology
any longer

Wyatt et al (2002)
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Back to users
Three-dimensional typology

• Literature on users in SI - very fragmented

• Verhees and Verbong (2015) did systematic literature review of user roles in SI
literature

• They found three dimensions underpinning the di erent roles that the various
papers discussed:

• Level of cooperation (from ‘individual’ to ‘collective’)

• Deviation from mainstream practices (from ‘barrier to change’ to ‘enabler of change’)

• Goal-oriented e ort (from ‘passive’ to ‘active’)

• Together, these dimensions create a three-dimensional typology of user roles

Verhees and Verbong, 2015
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3-D typology of user roles

Deviation from mainstream practices

r t Leve
effo l of c
e d oope
ent ratio
o r i n
al-
Go

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2-D typology
(forgetting the ‘z-axis’)

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User innovation in energy
community-based Virtual Power Plant
User participation extends far beyond making purchasing decisions & paying the bills

Consumption/passive Generation Management/active

Picture by Luc van

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Summeren
Sustainability transitions
A difficult issue of needs

Let’s remember Von Hippel’s definition of a user:

✓ Experiences some need before the rest of the market does

✓ Stands to gain disproportionally from a solution to that need

✓ Develops that solution

How does that apply to sustainability transitions?

✓ Many people do not feel any need (to change) !?!?

✓ The direct gains are questionable: we do it for the next generation, who cares?

✓ Therefore who will pay for developing solution? Financial gains di cult to appropriate.

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Additionally…

• Transitions are difficult due to path dependency & lock-in, also long-term
• Regimes are stabilised on many dimensions, one of them: practices
• Creation, sharing & reproduction of collective routines & practices is key to stability & at
the same time to the transformation of systems
• The 8 octants typology falling short of fully grasping the roles of users in transitions

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While….

• New routines are shaped & system change enacted by consumers who
should be re-conceptualised as users because they are important
stakeholders in the innovation process
• In both an individual & a collective capacity, users play a crucial role in
initiating, accelerating & stabilising transitions through e.g.:
• Stimulating diffusion through bulk purchases & personal advertisement,
creation of user clubs, excursions & self-help systems
• Being important generators of expectations
• Provision of legitimacy for community projects & other local initiatives

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User innovation in transitions
A few examples

• Austria: a v. high dissemination rate in solar collectors, with ca 40,000 solar heaters equipped
with self-built collectors in the 1990s & Austria’s industry playing a pioneering role in Europe.

• Denmark: users started the construction of modern wind turbines in the late 1970s; by 2000
they had already installed more than 2,000 (increasingly larger) on-shore wind turbines.

• Switzerland: users were crucial in initiating & developing a substantial niche market in car-
sharing; since 1987 growth to > than 125,000 users

• Germany: exceptionally high degree of legitimacy of renewable energy options signi cantly
accelerated the di usion of solar cells & wind turbines

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Users in transitions
Definition

• Individuals or groups that use system services, including elements of the systems

• They can be users of one item and producer of another

• Sometimes unclear who the user is: citizen

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Transitions dynamics
Stylised view

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User roles in the energy transition

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Users in transitions
Typology of collective roles

• User-producers

• User-consumers

• User-intermediaries

• User-citizens

• User-legitimators

Verbong, Verhees, Wieczorek, 2019; Schot & Kanger, 2016

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Socio-technical system
Automobility

Schot &53Kanger, 2016

User-producers

• User-producers: through ‘tinkering’ & experimenting, these people improve (or even
invent) technological innovations
Example: early adopters of
the car play key role in
determining what the car was
‘for’ (racing, touring). Many
were technologically
proficient (this was actually a
reason to purchase: they
could show off their skills to
their friends). This resulted in
innovations in car design

Verbong, Verhees, Wieczorek, 2019; Schot & Kanger, 2016

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User-legitimators

• User-legitimators: people who shape the values & world views of other users,
giving their activities meaning, purpose & rationale
Example: Doctors (who needed
fast transportation to get
to their patients) and other
professionals (who needed
reliable transportation) were
crucial in transforming the
image of the car from a racing
machine to a utilitarian,
practical transport vehicle

Verbong, Verhees, Wieczorek, 2019; Schot & Kanger, 2016

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User-intermediaries

• User-intermediaries: organisations who represent users. They enrol new

actors, create spaces for producers, users & regulators to meet, & try to align
technologies, actors & rules

Example: the Dutch

automobile club ANWB.
They coordinated and
informed users, and
brokered between them,
policymakers and car
manufacturers.

Verbong, Verhees, Wieczorek, 2019; Schot & Kanger, 2016

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User-citizens

• User-citizens: people who engage in (political) lobbying for or against a

particular technology (niche or regime), &/or organize into social movements &
activist groups to protest against a particular technology

Example: people who

lobbied for the car over
public transportation, and
other people/groups who
lobbied against the car
(e.g. for safety reasons,
‘devil machine’).

Verbong, Verhees, Wieczorek, 2019;

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Schot & Kanger, 2016
User-consumers

• User-consumers: people who exercise their purchasing power and de ne

their lifestyle through a variety of consumption practices

Example: people buying

cars for commuting
(enabling to live further
away from work in better,
cheaper houses), people
buying cars for social-
recreational reasons, the
development of ‘car
culture’ (maintenance)

Verbong, Verhees, Wieczorek, 2019; Schot & Kanger, 2016

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User roles & regime (de)stability

Figure 2. User roles in the transition process resulting from increasing stability of rules and adoption
(adapted from Schot and Geels 2007, 614).
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User roles & transition phases

Each transition phase is characterized by an ‘explosion’ of sorts: an explosion in technological and symbolic variety in the start-up phase, an explosion in the variety of use
practices in the acceleration phase and the explosion in the number of users in the stabilization phase. It is only when the regime and the associated practices have been
turned immobile when the vast niche enhancing potential of the system becomes unleashed.

Schot et al., 2016

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User roles & transition phases

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Concluding

• Tough to understand the story of the success of the automobile without understanding the
changing roles of users.
• Given the emergence of new sustainable users, user movements and the development of
larger market niches for sustainable products in recent years…
• …the process of users taking on new roles will be crucially important for transforming these
niches into the new socio-technical regimes of the future (just as it was for the car in the
previous century)
• So, policymakers should move away from focusing on pollution control, cleaner production,
and green products…
• …and towards focusing on the consumption patterns which fuel the resource-intensity of
everyday lives.

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Actors and Users

Co-creation workshop

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Actor mapping
30 min

• Use this template to map the key

actors that maintain the existing
regime(s)

• Use colours to represent their

attitude towards your project/
innovation:

• Positive

• Negative

• Neutral
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Prioritise actors
30 min

Assess the power position of the (most important) actors that in uence your
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project: little (0), intermediate (+), and much power (++)?

Evaluate the actors’ involvement and interests (stakes) in your project or

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program?: large (++), small (+), indi erent (0)

• Identify alliances ---- and con ict lines <—>

• Add this information to the previous slide

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Power/interest
20 min

• Rearrange your post it notes into

below canvas to show the key
actors you should bother with
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Reflection
20 min

• Which actors are critical for the success/failure of your innovation?

• Are these actors mostly individual, organisations or sectoral?

• Are they local, regional, national, or global?
• Are there any intermediaries? What do they intermediate between?
• Which actors and what roles can they play in supporting your innovation?
•

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